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Full-Text Articles in Law
Aedpa's Wrecks: Comity, Finality, And Federalism, Lee B. Kovarsky
Aedpa's Wrecks: Comity, Finality, And Federalism, Lee B. Kovarsky
Lee Kovarsky
Over the last decade, federal courts have internalized the idea that interpretations of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) should disfavor habeas relief. This Article explores the strange legislative history surrounding AEDPA's passage and the resulting problems in using 'comity, finality, and federalism' to express this interpretive mood. It demonstrates that such a simplistic reading of habeas reform is deeply misguided. Through the use of public choice and related models, the Article explores the roots of this interpretive problem. It ultimately rejects any attempt to characterize AEDPA by reference to legislative purpose.
A Constitutional Theory Of Habeas Power, Lee B. Kovarsky
A Constitutional Theory Of Habeas Power, Lee B. Kovarsky
Lee Kovarsky
Modern habeas corpus law generally favors an idiom of individual rights, but the Great Writ’s central feature is judicial power. Throughout the seventeenth-century English Civil Wars, the Glorious Revolution, and the war in the American colonies, the habeas writ was a means by which judges consolidated authority over the question of what counted as “lawful” custody. Of course, the American Framers did not simply copy the English writ—they embedded it in a Constitutional system of separated powers and dual sovereignty. “A Constitutional Theory of Habeas Power” is an inquiry into the newly-minted principle that the federal Constitution guarantees some quantum …
Original Habeas Redux, Lee B. Kovarsky
Original Habeas Redux, Lee B. Kovarsky
Lee Kovarsky
In "Original Habeas Redux," I map the modern dimensions of the Supreme Court’s most exotic jurisdiction—the original habeas writ. The Court has not issued such relief since 1925 and, until recently, had not ordered a case transferred pursuant to that authority in over fifty years. In August 2009, by transferring a capital prisoner’s original habeas petition to a federal district court rather than dismissing it outright, In re Davis abruptly thrust this obscure power back into mainstream legal debate over both the death penalty and the Supreme Court’s appellate jurisdiction. Scrambling to understand how the authority has evolved since its …
Aedpa's (Imaginary) Purposes, Lee B. Kovarsky
Aedpa's (Imaginary) Purposes, Lee B. Kovarsky
Lee Kovarsky
Bearing the scars of a ferocious half-century battle over habeas reform, the 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (“AEDPA”) has become less a legal text than a force of nature. Ignoring that statutory language limits perceived legislative purposes as much as it embodies them, federal courts have transformed what should be text-bound interests into unconstrained judicial fetishes. In (Michael) Williams v. Taylor, the Supreme Court announced that Congress intended for AEDPA to vindicate “principles of comity, finality, and federalism,” and that proposition has become a sacred cow of modern habeas jurisprudence. While habeas scholarship has been critical of the …
Aedpa's (Imaginery) Purposes, Lee B. Kovarsky
Aedpa's (Imaginery) Purposes, Lee B. Kovarsky
Lee Kovarsky
Bearing the scars of a ferocious half-century battle over habeas reform, the 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (“AEDPA”) has become less a legal text than a force of nature. Ignoring that statutory language limits perceived legislative purposes as much as it embodies them, federal courts have transformed what should be text-bound interests into unconstrained judicial fetishes. In (Michael) Williams v. Taylor, the Supreme Court announced that Congress intended for AEDPA to vindicate “principles of comity, finality, and federalism,” and that proposition has become a sacred cow of modern habeas jurisprudence. While habeas scholarship has been critical of the …
Aedpa's (Imaginary) Purposes, Lee B. Kovarsky
Aedpa's (Imaginary) Purposes, Lee B. Kovarsky
Lee Kovarsky
Bearing the scars of a ferocious half-century battle over habeas reform, the 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (“AEDPA”) has become less a legal text than a force of nature. Ignoring that statutory language limits perceived legislative purposes as much as it embodies them, federal courts have transformed what should be text-bound interests into unconstrained judicial fetishes. In (Michael) Williams v. Taylor, the Supreme Court announced that Congress intended for AEDPA to vindicate “principles of comity, finality, and federalism,” and that proposition has become a sacred cow of modern habeas jurisprudence. While habeas scholarship has been critical of the …