Digital Commons Network^™

Initiating A New Constitutional Dialogue: The Increased Importance Under Aedpa Of Seeking Certiorari From Judgments Of State Courts, Giovanna Shay, Christopher Lasch

Faculty Scholarship

The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) contains a provision restricting federal courts from considering any authority other than holdings of the Supreme Court in determining whether to grant a state prisoner’s petition for habeas corpus. Through an empirical study of cert filings and cases decided by the Supreme Court, the Authors assess this provision’s impact on the development of federal constitutional criminal doctrine. Before AEDPA and other restrictions on federal habeas corpus, lower federal courts and state courts contributed to doctrinal development by engaging in a dialogue. This dialogue served to articulate the broad constitutional principles set forth …

The Future Of American Sentencing: A National Roundtable On Blakely, Ronald J. Allen, Albert Alschuler, Douglas A. Berman, Stephanos Bibas, Frank O. Bowman Iii, Daniel P. Blank, Charles R. Breyer, Steven Chanenson, Michael R. Dreeben, Margareth Etienne, Jeffrey L. Fisher, Patrick Keenan, Joseph E. Kennedy, Nancy J. King, Susan J. Klein, Rory K. Little, Marc L. Miller, J. Bradley O'Connell, David Porter, Kevin R. Reitz, Daniel C. Richman, Kate Stith, Barbara Tombs, Richard B. Walker, Robert Weisberg, Robert F. Wright Jr., Jonathan Wroblewski, David N. Yellen

Faculty Scholarship

In the wake of the dramatic Supreme Court decision in Blakely v. Washington, Stanford Law School convened an assembly of the most eminent academic and professional sentencing experts in the country to jointly assess the meaning of the decision and its implications for federal and state sentencing reform. The event took place on October 8 and 9, just a few months after Blakely came down and the very week that the Supreme Court heard the arguments in United States v. Booker and United States v. Fanfan, the cases that will test Blakely's application to the Federal Sentencing Guidelines. Thus the …

The Great Writ In Action: Empirical Light On The Federal Habeas Corpus Debate, Larry Yackle

Faculty Scholarship

The national debate regarding federal habeas corpus for state prisoners is fueled in the main by ideology. To some, the authority of the federal courts to entertain constitutional challenges to state criminal convictions is the embodiment of all that was right about the Warren Court and the vision that Court offered of a meaningful system of American liberty, underwritten by independent federal tribunals willing and able to check the coercive power of government. By this account, the Bill of Rights is the protean source of safeguards for individual freedom - commanding generous, imaginative, and insightful elaboration by federal courts at …

Habeas Corpus And The Penalty Of Death, Michael E. Tigar

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

More Than "Slightly Retro:" The Rehnquist Court's Rout Of Habeas Corpus Jurisdiction In Teague V. Lane, James S. Liebman

Faculty Scholarship

Someone I know, more a student of contemporary fashion than I, sometimes describes people dressed in uniformly dark clothing as "slightly retro." I am not sure of the allusion, but what I can discern leads me to think that the Supreme Court's nonretroactivity decisions beginning with Teague v. Lane are – puns aside – more than just "slightly retro."

The Court's innovation may be stated as follows: For 160 years, Congress empowered federal judges to order state officials to release or retry individuals held in custody in violation of federal law as those federal judges, and not the state officials, …

Form And Function In The Administration Of Justice: The Bill Of Rights And Federal Habeas Corpus, Larry Yackle

Faculty Scholarship

Part I critiques the Report's insistence that accurate fact finding exhausts, or nearly exhausts, the objectives of criminal justice, identifies the fundamental role of the Bill of Rights in the American political order, and situates federal habeas corpus within that framework. Part II traces the Report's historical review of the federal habeas jurisdiction and critiques the Report's too-convenient reliance on selected materials that, on examination, fail to undermine conventional understandings of the writ's development as a postconviction remedy. Part III responds to the Report's complaints regarding current habeas corpus practice and refutes contentions that the habeas jurisdiction overburdens federal dockets …