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Federal Habeas Relief And The New Tolerance For "Reasonably Erroneous" Applications Of Federal Law, Todd E. Pettys

Todd E. Pettys

In Williams v. Taylor and Ramdass v. Angelone, the United States Supreme Court confronted one of the core provisions of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 and confirmed what some had hoped and others had feared: A federal court may no longer grant habeas relief merely because it concludes that a state court erroneously applied federal law when it rejected a state prisoner’s federal constitutional claim. Instead, a federal court must deny habeas relief to a state prisoner whose federal constitutional rights have been violated and whose requests for relief have been erroneously denied by a state …