English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Zendy Plus

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Zendy Tools

Zendy Open

On March 18, 1963, the Supreme Court announced Fay v. Noia1 and Townsend v. Sain,2 two decisions which significantly enlarged the availability of federal habeas corpus as a procedure for vacating state criminal convictions. These decisions have been characterized as the culmination of a decade-long process of expansion of that remedy for state prisoners.3 In both of them the majority opinions emphasized that, in thus extending the reach of the federal habeas corpus proceeding to provide appellate review of the state court records and retrial of factual issues already determined in the state courts, the Court was merely fulfilling the intent of the Reconstruction Congress in enacting the Habeas Corpus Act of 1867. 4 That Congress, the Court said, drafted the act to implement post-Civil War Reconstruction and enforce the new rights established by the post-war constitutional amendments. To one familiar with the legal landscape of a century ago, these assertions must provoke doubts, which are reinforced on a reading of the text of the act. An examination of the sources consequently seems called for. The historical inquiry thus proposed is interesting on several additional counts. It is the starting point of the somewhat extraordinary process by which the 1867 statute, after reposing almost quiescent for decades, has proved in more recent years to have been a sleeping giant, capable, when aroused, of laying about with astonishing results. Our

The Habeas Corpus Act of 1867: The Supreme Court as Legal Historian