Court Opinion

ID: 9426722
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:18:46.260829+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:02.486721
License: Public Domain

Mr. Chief Justice Burger,
with whom Mr. Justice Blackmun and Mr. Justice Rehnquist join, concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.
I join Part I of the Court’s opinion and concur in the Court’s judgment. However, I find it unnecessary to examine the adequacy of the remedy provided by § 23-110 (g) for I do not consider that the statute in any way implicates the respondent’s rights under the Suspension Clause, Art. I, § 9, cl. 2, of the Constitution.
The sweep of the Suspension Clause must be measured by reference to the intention of the Framers and their understanding of what the writ of habeas corpus meant at the time the Constitution was drafted. The scope of the writ during the 17th and 18th centuries has been described as follows:
“[O]nce a person had been convicted by a superior court of general jurisdiction, a court disposing of a habeas corpus petition could not go behind the conviction for any purpose other than to verify the formal jurisdiction of the *385committing court.” Oaks, Legal History in the High Court—Habeas Corpus, 64 Mich. L. Rev. 451, 468 (1966).
Thus, at common law, the writ was available (1) to compel adherence to prescribed procedures in advance of trial; (2) to inquire into the cause of commitment not pursuant to judicial process; and (3) to inquire whether a committing court had proper jurisdiction. The writ in 1789 was not considered “a means by which one court of general jurisdiction exercises post-conviction review over the judgment of another court of like authority.” Id., at 451.
Dicta to the contrary in Fay v. Noia, 372 U. S. 391 (1963), have since been shown to be based on an incorrect view of the historic functions of habeas corpus Schneckloth v. Bustamonte, 412 U. S. 218, 252-256 (1973) (Powell, J., concurring). The fact is that in defining the scope of federal collateral remedies the Court has invariably engaged in statutory interpretation, construing what Congress has actually provided, rather than what it constitutionally must provide. See Developments in the Law—Federal Habeas Corpus, 83 Harv. L. Rev. 1038, 1268 (1970). Judge Friendly has expressed this view clearly:
“It can scarcely be doubted that the writ protected by the suspension clause is the writ as known to the framers, not as Congress may have chosen to expand it or, more pertinently, as the Supreme Court has interpreted what Congress did.” Friendly, Is Innocence Irrelevant? Collateral Attack on Criminal Judgments, 38 U. Chi. L. Rev. 142, 170 (1970) (footnote omitted).
Since I do not believe that the Suspension Clause requires Congress to provide a federal remedy for collateral review of a conviction entered by a court of competent jurisdiction, I see no issue of constitutional dimension raised by the statute in question. Under this view of the case, I need not consider the important constitutional question whether the Suspension *386Clause protects the jurisdiction of the Art. III courts. A doctrine that allowed transfer of the historic habeas jurisdiction to an Art. I court could raise separation-of-powers questions, since the traditional Great Writ was largely a remedy against executive detention. See P. Bator, P. Mishkin, D. Shapiro, & H. Wechsler, Hart & Wechsler’s The Federal Courts and the Federal System 1513-1514 (2d ed. 1973). However, I agree with Part I of the Court’s opinion, namely that § 23-110 (g) was designed to preclude access to the District Court, not merely to assure exhaustion of local remedies and I would end the inquiry there. Congress has not provided access to the District Court and is under no compulsion to do so. I would therefore reverse the judgment on this basis.