Opinion ID: 434899
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Encouragement of Resistance to Wrongful Government Activity: Public Policy

Text: 32 The EAJA was passed partly to encourage challenges to improper actions by government agencies. The drafters perceived legal actions as helping to formulate public policy: 33 An adjudication or civil action provides a concrete, adversarial test of Government regulation and thereby insures the legitimacy and fairness of the law. An adjudication, for example, may show that the policy or factual foundation underlying an agency rule is erroneous or inaccurate, or it may provide a vehicle for developing or announcing more precise rules. The bill thus recognizes that the expense of correcting error on the part of the Government should not rest wholly on the party whose willingness to litigate or adjudicate has helped to define the limits of Federal authority. 34 See H.R.Rep. No. 1418, 96th Cong., 1st Sess. 10, reprinted in 1980 U.S.Code Cong. & Ad.News 4984, 4988-89. By contrast, habeas petitions are dedicated to vindicating individual rights based on the Constitution rather than refining rules and policy. They are no more public policy oriented than is a criminal trial. Moreover, we doubt that Congress felt a need to encourage the filing of habeas petitions; they flourished long before the Act was proposed. 35 The above considerations convince us that Congress either meant to exclude habeas petitions from the scope of section 2412 or overlooked the question. But because a waiver of the sovereign immunity of the United States must be unequivocal and explicit, see, e.g., United States v. Testan, 424 U.S. 392, 399, 96 S.Ct. 948, 953, 47 L.Ed.2d 114 (1976), this Court need only consider whether Congress clearly manifested its affirmative intention to include habeas petitions within section 2412. Because we find that it did not, the mere inclusion in the statute of the words any civil proceeding should not be construed to authorize attorney's fees in habeas proceedings. Accordingly, the district court erred by characterizing a habeas proceeding as a civil action that falls under section 2412. See Boudin v. Thomas, 554 F.Supp. 703, 705 (S.D.N.Y.1982). 36 Thus, to the extent that Boudin's action was a petition for habeas corpus, the district court could not award her attorney's fees because the action did not fall within the provisions of the EAJA. However, Boudin also sought an injunction ordering prison authorities to allow her to have contact visits with her infant son. The district court granted the injunction on the ground that Boudin had a First Amendment right to contact visits. Boudin v. Thomas, 533 F.Supp. 786, 792-93 (S.D.N.Y.1982). The part of her complaint seeking this relief is without question a civil action for purposes of the EAJA. Cf. Preiser v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. at 499 n. 14, 93 S.Ct. at 1841 n. 14 (claim exclusively cognizable under federal habeas corpus may be litigated simultaneously with federal civil rights claims). For this civil portion of Boudin's action, we must determine whether one of the exceptions to section 2412(d)(1) applies here, namely, whether the government can show that its position was substantially justified. 37