Law Commons^™

Retroactive Application Of "New Rules" And The Antiterrorism And Effective Death Penalty Act, A. Christopher Bryant

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

For three decades, the application of United States Supreme Court criminal procedure decisions has confused the Court's habeas corpus jurisprudence. In 1999, the Court's decision in Williams v. Taylor might have resolved the ambiguous relationship between the pre-1996 habeas corpus retroactivity decisions - the most significant of which was Teague v. Lane - and the habeas corpus reform provisions of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA). Unfortunately, the Williams decision has only engendered further confusion.

Two decades before Teague, the second Justice Harlan proposed an approach to retroactivity questions, arguing that a decision that announced …