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Federal Habeas In The Information Age, Wayne A. Logan

Scholarly Publications

One would be hard-pressed to identify a more extolled, and storied, aspect of the Anglo-American legal tradition than the writ of habeas corpus. Tracing its lineage back to the Magna Carta, the Great Writ was so revered by the Framers of the U.S Constitution that they expressly prohibited its suspension except in times of extreme governmental distress. Writing in 1868, Chief Justice Salmon Chase characterized habeas as "the most important human right in the Constitution," the ''best and only sufficient defense of personal freedom." Justice Brennan, writing almost one hundred years later, observed that the history of habeas "is …