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Lee Kovarsky

Selected Works

2007

Articles 1 - 3 of 3

Full-Text Articles in Law

Aedpa's (Imaginary) Purposes, Lee B. Kovarsky Mar 2007

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 Mar 2007

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 Mar 2007

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 …