Jones v. Hendrix

(Slip Opinion) OCTOBER TERM, 2022 1
Syllabus
NOTE: Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be released, as is
being done in connection with this case, at the time the opinion is issued.
The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been
prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader.
See United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U. S. 321, 337.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
Syllabus
JONES v. HENDRIX, WARDEN
CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR
THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT
No. 21–857. Argued November 1, 2022—Decided June 22, 2023
In 2000, the District Court for the Western District of Missouri sentenced
petitioner Marcus DeAngelo Jones after he was convicted on two
counts of unlawful possession of a firearm by a felon, in violation of 18
U. S. C. §922(g)(1), and one count of making false statements to ac-
quire a firearm. The Eighth Circuit affirmed Jones’ convictions and
sentence. Jones then filed a motion pursuant to 28 U. S. C. §2255,
which resulted in the vacatur of one of his concurrent §922(g) sen-
tences. Many years later, this Court held in Rehaif v. United States,
588 U. S. ___, that a defendant’s knowledge of the status that disqual-
ifies him from owning a firearm is an element of a §922(g) conviction.
Rehaif ’s holding abrogated contrary Eighth Circuit precedent applied
by the courts in Jones’ trial and direct appeal. Seeking to collaterally
attack his remaining §922(g) conviction based on Rehaif ’s statutory
holding, Jones filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus under 28
U. S. C. §2241 in the district of his imprisonment, the Eastern District
of Arkansas. The District Court dismissed Jones’ habeas petition for
lack of subject-matter jurisdiction, and the Eighth Circuit affirmed.
Held: Section 2255(e) does not allow a prisoner asserting an intervening
change in interpretation of a criminal statute to circumvent the Anti-
terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996’s (AEDPA) re-
strictions on second or successive §2255 motions by filing a §2241 ha-
beas petition. Pp. 3–25.
(a) Congress created §2255 as a remedial vehicle by which federal
prisoners could collaterally attack their sentences by motion in the
sentencing court, rather than by a petition for a writ of habeas corpus
under §2241 in the district of confinement. The “sole purpose” of §2255
was to address the “serious administrative problems” created by dis-
trict courts collaterally reviewing one another’s proceedings without
2 JONES v. HENDRIX
Syllabus
access to needed evidence and “aggravated” by the concentration of
federal prisoners in certain judicial districts that therefore faced “an
inordinate number of habeas corpus actions.” United States v. Hay-
man, 342 U. S. 205, 212–214, 219. To make this change effective, Con-
gress generally barred federal prisoners “authorized” to file a §2255
motion from filing a petition under §2241. But—in a provision of
§2255(e) now known as the saving clause—Congress preserved access
to §2241 in cases where “the remedy by motion is inadequate or inef-
fective to test the legality of [a prisoner’s] detention.”
Congress later enacted AEDPA, which, as relevant here, barred sec-
ond or successive §2255 motions unless based on either “newly discov-
ered evidence,” §2255(h)(1), or “a new rule of constitutional law,”
§2255(h)(2). Some courts faced with AEDPA’s second-or-successive re-
strictions held that §2255 was “inadequate and ineffective” under the
saving clause when AEDPA’s restrictions barred a prisoner from seek-
ing relief based on a new interpretation of a criminal statute that cir-
cuit precedent had foreclosed at the time of the prisoner’s trial, appeal,
and first §2255 motion.
Section 2255(e)’s saving clause does not authorize that end-run
around AEDPA. The clause preserves recourse to §2241 in cases where
unusual circumstances make it impossible or impracticable to seek re-
lief in the sentencing court, as well as for challenges to detention other
than collateral attacks on a sentence. But §2255(h) specifies the two
limited conditions in which federal prisoners may bring second or suc-
cessive collateral attacks on their sentences. The inability of a pris-
oner with a statutory claim to satisfy §2255(h) does not mean that the
prisoner may bring the claim in a §2241 petition. Pp. 3–12.
(b) Jones and the United States each advance unpersuasive theories
of when and why §2255(h)’s exclusion of statutory claims sometimes
renders §2255 inadequate or ineffective for purposes of the saving
clause. Pp. 12–25.
(1) Jones argues that §2255 is necessarily “inadequate or ineffec-
tive to test” a prisoner’s claim if the §2255 court fails to apply the cor-
rect substantive law. But the saving clause is concerned with the ad-
equacy or effectiveness of the remedial vehicle (“the remedy by
motion”), not any court’s asserted errors of law. Next, Jones argues
that courts of equity would afford relief from “inadequate” legal reme-
dies in a broad range of circumstances; to the extent relevant to
§2255(e), this proves at most that a variety of practical obstacles might
trigger the saving clause, cf. Hayman, 342 U. S., at 215, n. 23, not that
the clause offers an exemption from AEDPA’s limits on second or suc-
cessive collateral attacks. Jones further argues that the saving
clause’s use of the present tense (“is inadequate or ineffective”) means
that §2241 is available whenever a prisoner is presently unable to file
Cite as: 599 U. S. ____ (2023) 3
Syllabus
a §2255 motion. That argument would nullify AEDPA’s limits on col-
lateral relief.
Jones suggests that denying him the chance to raise his Rehaif claim
in a §2241 petition would violate the Suspension Clause, U. S. Const.,
Art. I, §9, cl. 2. This argument fails because it would extend the writ
of habeas corpus far beyond its scope when the Constitution was
drafted and ratified. Department of Homeland Security v. Thuraissi-
giam, 591 U. S. ___, ___. When the Suspension Clause was adopted,
Jones’ Rehaif claim would not have been cognizable in habeas at all.
At the founding, a sentence after conviction “by a court of competent
jurisdiction” was “ ‘in itself sufficient cause’ ” for a prisoner’s continued
detention. Brown v. Davenport, 596 U. S. ___, ___ (quoting Ex parte
Watkins, 3 Pet. 193, 202). Of particular relevance here, a habeas court
had no power to “look beyond the judgment” to “re-examine the charges
on which it was rendered” for substantive errors of law—even “if . . .
the [sentencing] court ha[d] misconstrued the law, and ha[d] pro-
nounced an offence to be punishable criminally, which [was] not so.”
Id., at 202, 209. While Jones argues that pre-founding practice was
otherwise, he fails to identify a single clear case of habeas being used
to relitigate a conviction after trial by a court of general criminal juris-
diction.
The principles of Ex parte Watkins guided this Court’s understand-
ing of the habeas writ throughout the 19th century and well into the
20th. See Brown, 596 U. S., at ___, n. 1 (collecting cases). It was not
until 1974, in Davis v. United States, 417 U. S. 333, that the Court held
for the first time that a substantive error of statutory law could be a
cognizable ground for a collateral attack on a federal court’s criminal
judgment. See id., at 342–347. The Suspension Clause neither consti-
tutionalizes that innovation nor requires its extension to a second or
successive collateral attack.
Jones’ remaining constitutional arguments are no more persuasive.
He argues that denying him a new opportunity for collateral review of
his Rehaif claim threatens Congress’s exclusive power to define crimes,
but a court does not usurp legislative power simply by misinterpreting
the law in a given case. Next, Jones points to Fiore v. White, 531 U. S.
225 (per curiam), which applied the rule that due process requires that
the prosecution prove every element of a crime beyond a reasonable
doubt. But due process does not guarantee a direct appeal, McKane v.
Durston, 153 U. S. 684, 687, let alone the opportunity to have legal
issues redetermined in successive collateral attacks. Finally, the
Eighth Amendment’s constraint on the kinds of punishments govern-
ments may inflict creates no independent entitlement to a second
round of postconviction review. Pp. 12–20.
4 JONES v. HENDRIX
Syllabus
(2) The Government asks the Court to adopt a novel interpreta-
tion of §2255(e)’s saving clause based on an elaborate argument. Start-
ing from the premise that the words “inadequate or ineffective” imply
reference to a “benchmark” of adequacy and effectiveness, the Govern-
ment equates that benchmark with the types of claims cognizable in
federal habeas petitions by state prisoners under the general habeas
statutes. The Government ultimately concludes that §2255(h) renders
§2255 “inadequate or ineffective to test” a federal prisoner’s statutory
claim in cases where the prisoner has already filed one §2255 motion
and the claim otherwise satisfies pre-AEDPA habeas principles, which
generally will require “a ‘colorable showing of factual innocence.’ ”
McCleskey v. Zant, 499 U. S. 467, 495 (quoting Kuhlmann v. Wilson,
477 U. S. 436, 454 (plurality opinion)).
The Court sees no indication that the saving clause adopts the Gov-
ernment’s state-prisoner-habeas benchmark. In any event, that
benchmark has uncertain relevance to the question presented here be-
cause federal habeas relief does not lie for errors of state law. The
Government’s theory ultimately rests instead on its assertion that
§2255(h) is simply not clear enough to support the inference that Con-
gress entirely closed the door on pure statutory claims not brought in
a federal prisoner’s initial §2255 motion. That assertion is unpersua-
sive.
The Government asserts that the Court must require “the clearest
command” before construing AEDPA to “close [the] courthouse doors”
on “a strong equitable claim” for relief. Holland v. Florida, 560 U. S.
631, 646, 649 (internal quotation marks omitted). But AEDPA’s re-
strictions embody Congress’s policy judgment regarding the appropri-
ate balance between finality and error correction. The Court declines
to adopt a presumption against finality. Further, the Court typically
has found clear-statement rules appropriate when a statute implicates
historically or constitutionally grounded norms that the Court would
not expect Congress to unsettle lightly. See, e.g., Alabama Assn. of
Realtors v. Department of Health and Human Servs., 594 U. S. ___, ___
(per curiam). As far as history and the Constitution are concerned,
“there is nothing incongruous about a system in which this kind of er-
ror—the application of a since-rejected statutory interpretation—can-
not be remedied after final judgment,” George v. McDonough, 596 U. S.
___, ___, and thus nothing fundamentally surprising about Congress
declining to make such errors remediable in a second or successive col-
lateral attack. Pp. 20–25.
8 F. 4th 683, affirmed.
THOMAS, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which ROBERTS, C. J.,
and ALITO, GORSUCH, KAVANAUGH, and BARRETT, JJ., joined. SOTOMAYOR
Cite as: 599 U. S. ____ (2023) 5
Syllabus
and KAGAN, JJ., filed a dissenting opinion. JACKSON, J., filed a dissenting
opinion.
Cite as: 599 U. S. ____ (2023) 1
Opinion of the Court
NOTICE: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the
United States Reports. Readers are requested to notify the Reporter of
Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Washington, D. C. 20543,
pio@supremecourt.gov, of any typographical or other formal errors.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
_________________
No. 21–857
_________________
MARCUS DEANGELO JONES, PETITIONER v.
DEWAYNE HENDRIX, WARDEN
ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF
APPEALS FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT
[June 22, 2023]
JUSTICE THOMAS delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case concerns the interplay between two statutes: 28
U. S. C. §2241, the general habeas corpus statute, and
§2255, which provides an alternative postconviction rem-
edy for federal prisoners. Since 1948, Congress has pro-
vided that a federal prisoner who collaterally attacks his
sentence ordinarily must proceed by a motion in the sen-
tencing court under §2255, rather than by a petition for a
writ of habeas corpus under §2241. To that end, §2255(e)
bars a federal prisoner from proceeding under §2241 “un-
less . . . the [§2255] remedy by motion is inadequate or in-
effective to test the legality of his detention.”
Separately, since the Antiterrorism and Effective Death
Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), second or successive §2255
motions are barred unless they rely on either “newly discov-
ered evidence,” §2255(h)(1), or “a new rule of constitutional
law,” §2255(h)(2). A federal prisoner may not, therefore, file
a second or successive §2255 motion based solely on a more
favorable interpretation of statutory law adopted after his
conviction became final and his initial §2255 motion was
resolved.
2 JONES v. HENDRIX
Opinion of the Court
The question presented is whether that limitation on sec-
ond or successive motions makes §2255 “inadequate or in-
effective” such that the prisoner may proceed with his stat-
utory claim under §2241. We hold that it does not.
I
In 2000, the U. S. District Court for the Western District
of Missouri convicted petitioner Marcus DeAngelo Jones of
two counts of unlawful possession of a firearm by a felon, in
violation of 18 U. S. C. §922(g)(1), and one count of making
false statements to acquire a firearm, in violation of
§922(a)(6). The Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit af-
firmed his convictions and sentence of 327 months’ impris-
onment. See United States v. Jones, 266 F. 3d 804 (2001).
After losing his appeal, Jones filed a timely §2255 motion to
vacate, set aside, or correct his sentence, which resulted in
the vacatur of one of his concurrent §922(g) sentences but
no other relief. See United States v. Jones, 403 F. 3d 604(CA8 2005); United States v. Jones, 185 Fed. Appx. 541(CA8 2006) (per curiam).
Years later, in Rehaif v. United States, 588 U. S. ___(2019), this Court held that a defendant’s knowledge of the
status that disqualifies him from owning a firearm is an el-
ement of a §922(g) conviction. In doing so, it abrogated the
Eighth Circuit’s contrary precedent, which the Western
District of Missouri and the Eighth Circuit had applied in
Jones’ trial and direct appeal. See Jones, 266 F. 3d, at 810,
n. 5.
After Rehaif, Jones hoped to leverage its holding into a
new collateral attack on his remaining §922(g) conviction.
But Rehaif ’s statutory holding satisfied neither of
§2255(h)’s gateway conditions for a second or successive
§2255 motion: It was neither “newly discovered evidence,”
§2255(h)(1), nor “a new rule of constitutional law,”
§2255(h)(2) (emphasis added). Unable to file a new §2255
motion in his sentencing court, Jones instead looked to
Cite as: 599 U. S. ____ (2023) 3
Opinion of the Court
§2255(e)’s “saving clause,” which provides that a federal
prisoner may file a petition for a writ of habeas corpus un-
der §2241 if—and only if—§2255’s “remedy by motion is in-
adequate or ineffective to test the legality of his detention.”
Invoking this clause, Jones petitioned the U. S. District
Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas, the district
where he was imprisoned, for a writ of habeas corpus under
§2241.
The District Court dismissed Jones’ habeas petition for
lack of subject-matter jurisdiction, and the Eighth Circuit
affirmed. 8 F. 4th 683 (2021). The Eighth Circuit rejected
Jones’ argument that the saving clause permits recourse to
§2241 to present a §2255(h)-barred claim based on an inter-
vening decision of statutory interpretation, as well as his
argument that foreclosing relief on his Rehaif claim would
violate the Suspension Clause, U. S. Const., Art. I, §9, cl. 2.
In doing so, the Eighth Circuit deepened a split among the
Courts of Appeals about whether prisoners in Jones’ cir-
cumstances may resort to §2241 via the saving clause.
We granted certiorari. 596 U. S. ___ (2022). The Solicitor
General then noticed her intent to defend the Eighth Cir-
cuit’s judgment but not its rationale. We appointed Morgan
Ratner as amicus curiae to argue in support of the Eighth
Circuit’s reasoning. 597 U. S. ___ (2022). She has ably dis-
charged her responsibilities.
II
Consistent with the Eighth Circuit’s reasoning, we hold
that §2255(e)’s saving clause does not permit a prisoner as-
serting an intervening change in statutory interpretation to
circumvent AEDPA’s restrictions on second or successive
§2255 motions by filing a §2241 petition. We begin by con-
sidering the role of the saving clause in §2255 prior to
AEDPA’s enactment. We then consider the impact of
AEDPA on the statutory scheme.
4 JONES v. HENDRIX
Opinion of the Court
A
In relevant part, §2255 provides:
“(a) A prisoner in custody under sentence of a court
established by Act of Congress claiming the right to be
released upon the ground that the sentence was im-
posed in violation of the Constitution or laws of the
United States, or that the court was without jurisdic-
tion to impose such sentence, or that the sentence was
in excess of the maximum authorized by law, or is oth-
erwise subject to collateral attack, may move the court
which imposed the sentence to vacate, set aside or cor-
rect the sentence.
. . . . .
“(e) An application for a writ of habeas corpus in be-
half of a prisoner who is authorized to apply for relief
by motion pursuant to this section, shall not be enter-
tained if it appears that the applicant has failed to ap-
ply for relief, by motion, to the court which sentenced
him, or that such court has denied him relief, unless it
also appears that the remedy by motion is inadequate
or ineffective to test the legality of his detention.”
In understanding this statutory text, “a page of history is
worth a volume of logic.” New York Trust Co. v. Eisner, 256
U. S. 345, 349 (1921). Section 2255 is an outgrowth of the
historic habeas corpus powers of the federal courts as ap-
plied to the special case of federal prisoners. The First Ju-
diciary Act authorized the federal courts “to grant writs of
habeas corpus for the purpose of an inquiry into the cause
of commitment,” with a proviso that such writs could “ex-
tend to prisoners in gaol” only “where they [were] in cus-
tody, under or by colour of the authority of the United
States, or [were] committed for trial before some court of
the same, or [were] necessary to be brought into court to
testify.” Act of Sept. 24, 1789, §14, 1 Stat. 82. In 1867,
Congress expanded the federal courts’ habeas powers to
Cite as: 599 U. S. ____ (2023) 5
Opinion of the Court
cover “all cases where any person may be restrained of his
or her liberty in violation of the constitution, or of any
treaty or law of the United States.” Ch. 28, 14 Stat. 385.
For most of our Nation’s history, a federal prisoner “claim-
ing the right to be released,” §2255(a), in a collateral attack
on his sentence would have relied on these Acts and their
successors.
That changed with the 1948 recodification and reorgani-
zation of the Judiciary Code. See generally 62 Stat. 869. In
enacting the present Title 28 of the United States Code,
Congress largely recodified the federal courts’ pre-existing
habeas authority in §§2241 and 2243, which, respectively,
confer the power to grant the writ and direct the issuing
court to “dispose of the matter as law and justice require.”
Id., at 964–965. At the same time, however, Congress cre-
ated §2255 as a separate remedial vehicle specifically de-
signed for federal prisoners’ collateral attacks on their sen-
tences.1 Id., at 967–968.
The “sole purpose” of this innovation, as this Court
acknowledged a few years later, “was to minimize the diffi-
culties encountered in habeas corpus hearings by affording
the same rights in another and more convenient forum.”
United States v. Hayman, 342 U. S. 205, 219 (1952); see also
Davis v. United States, 417 U. S. 333, 343 (1974) (“[Section]
2255 was intended to afford federal prisoners a remedy
identical in scope to federal habeas corpus”); accord, United
States v. Addonizio, 442 U. S. 178, 185 (1979); Hill v. United
——————
1 As first enacted, §2255 applied to any “prisoner in custody under sen-
tence of a court of the United States.” 62 Stat. 967. In 1949, Congress
substituted “court established by Act of Congress” for “court of the United
States,” making no other changes. §114, 63 Stat. 105 (internal quotation
marks omitted). Section 2255 was not again amended until AEDPA, and
the only post-AEDPA amendment simply added the current lettering
and numbering to what were previously undesignated paragraphs.
Court Security Improvement Act of 2007, §511, 121 Stat. 2545. For sim-
plicity, we use §2255’s current internal designations throughout this
opinion.
6 JONES v. HENDRIX
Opinion of the Court
States, 368 U. S. 424, 427 (1962). Experience had shown
that processing federal prisoners’ collateral attacks on their
sentences through habeas proceedings—and, therefore,
through the judicial districts in which they were confined—
resulted in “serious administrative problems.” Hayman,
342 U. S., at 212. Most significantly, a federal prisoner’s
district of confinement was often far removed from the rec-
ords of the sentencing court and other sources of needed ev-
idence. Id., at 212–213. These difficulties were “greatly ag-
gravated” by the concentration of federal prisoners in a
handful of judicial districts, which forced those District
Courts to process “an inordinate number of habeas corpus
actions.” Id., at 213–214.
Section 2255 solved these problems by rerouting federal
prisoners’ collateral attacks on their sentences to the courts
that had sentenced them. To make this change of venue
effective, Congress generally barred federal prisoners “au-
thorized to apply for relief by motion pursuant to” §2255
from applying “for a writ of habeas corpus” under §2241.
§2255(e). But, in a provision that has come to be known as
the saving clause, Congress preserved the habeas remedy
in cases where “the remedy by motion is inadequate or in-
effective to test the legality of [a prisoner’s] detention.”
Ibid.
Traditionally, courts have treated the saving clause as
covering unusual circumstances in which it is impossible or
impracticable for a prisoner to seek relief from the sentenc-
ing court. The clearest such circumstance is the sentencing
court’s dissolution; a motion in a court that no longer exists
is obviously “inadequate or ineffective” for any purpose.
See, e.g., Witham v. United States, 355 F. 3d 501, 504–505
(CA6 2004) (finding §2255 inadequate or ineffective after
court-martial was dissolved); Edwards v. United States,
1987 WL 7562, *1 (EDNY, Feb. 9, 1987) (finding §2255 in-
adequate or ineffective after District Court of the Canal
Zone was dissolved); cf. Spaulding v. Taylor, 336 F. 2d 192,
Cite as: 599 U. S. ____ (2023) 7
Opinion of the Court
193 (CA10 1964) (finding §2255 inadequate or ineffective
after Alaska territorial court was dissolved and federal and
state successor courts declined §2255 and state-habeas ju-
risdiction, respectively). The saving clause might also ap-
ply when “it is not practicable for the prisoner to have his
motion determined in the trial court because of his inability
to be present at the hearing, or for other reasons.”2 Hay-
man, 342 U. S., at 215, n. 23 (internal quotation marks
omitted).
In addition, the saving clause ensures that §2255(e) does
not displace §2241 when a prisoner challenges “the legality
of his detention” without attacking the validity of his sen-
tence. To give a few examples, a prisoner might wish to ar-
gue that he is being detained in a place or manner not au-
thorized by the sentence, that he has unlawfully been
denied parole or good-time credits, or that an administra-
tive sanction affecting the conditions of his detention is il-
legal. See generally Samak v. Warden, FCC Coleman–Me-
dium, 766 F. 3d 1271, 1280 (CA11 2014) (Pryor, J.,
concurring) (explaining that “[t]he ‘detention’ of a prisoner
encompasses much more than a criminal ‘sentence’ ”). The
briefs before us debate whether these types of challenges
——————
2 It bears mentioning that §2255 was enacted “eight years before Pres-
ident Eisenhower signed legislation funding the Interstate Highway Sys-
tem.” Brief for Court-Appointed Amicus Curiae 17. At that time, it
would not be surprising if removing a prisoner from the penitentiary,
transporting him to the sentencing court for a hearing, and taking him
back to prison again sometimes posed difficulties daunting enough to
make a §2255 proceeding practically unavailable. Cf. Stidham v. Swope,
82 F. Supp. 931, 932–933 (ND Cal. 1949) (describing the difficulty and
delay involved in transporting a prisoner “upwards of 1,500 miles” from
the federal penitentiary in Alcatraz to the sentencing court in Missouri,
a journey that “well could be two weeks” by rail). That this sort of prac-
tical inadequacy would be highly unusual today should not blind us to
the world in which Congress was legislating when it enacted the saving
clause.
8 JONES v. HENDRIX
Opinion of the Court
depend on the saving clause or proceed under §2241 “di-
rectly.” Compare Brief for Petitioner 31 and Brief for Re-
spondent 37–38 with Brief for Court-Appointed Amicus Cu-
riae 17–18. It is difficult to imagine a case in which this
logical distinction would make any practical difference.
That said, were it not for the saving clause, a literal reading
of §2255(e) might be thought to bar any “application for a
writ of habeas corpus in behalf of a [federal] prisoner,”
§2255(e), whether or not it challenged the “sentence . . . im-
posed,” §2255(a). If nothing else, then, the saving clause
guards against the danger that §2255(e) might be construed
to bar manner-of-detention challenges even though they are
not within §2255’s substantive scope.
B
In 1996, Congress enacted AEDPA, which made signifi-
cant reforms to the process of federal-court postconviction
review for both state and federal prisoners. Most relevant
here, AEDPA strictly limited “second or successive” §2255
motions to those that “contain—
“(1) newly discovered evidence that, if proven and
viewed in light of the evidence as a whole, would be suf-
ficient to establish by clear and convincing evidence
that no reasonable factfinder would have found the mo-
vant guilty of the offense; or
“(2) a new rule of constitutional law, made retroac-
tive to cases on collateral review by the Supreme Court,
that was previously unavailable.” §2255(h).
Importantly, AEDPA left the text of §2255(e) unchanged.
But AEDPA’s new second-or-successive restrictions indi-
rectly gave rise to a novel application of the saving clause.
Mere months before AEDPA’s enactment, this Court de-
cided Bailey v. United States, 516 U. S. 137 (1995). That
case interpreted the offense of “us[ing]” a firearm “during
and in relation to any crime of violence or drug trafficking
Cite as: 599 U. S. ____ (2023) 9
Opinion of the Court
crime,” in violation of then-existing 18 U. S. C. §924(c)(1),
more narrowly than many Circuits’ previous case law. See
516 U. S., at 142 (describing the Circuits’ approaches). Un-
der this Court’s §2255 precedent, Bailey’s narrowing inter-
pretation was grounds for a collateral attack by federal
prisoners who had been convicted under the Courts of Ap-
peals’ broader interpretations. See Davis, 417 U. S., at342–347 (holding a claim of legal error based on an inter-
vening change in statutory interpretation cognizable under
§2255). Many prisoners with Bailey claims, however, had
already exhausted their first §2255 motion, and Bailey’s
statutory holding plainly did not satisfy either of §2255(h)’s
conditions for a second or successive motion.
Several Courts of Appeals found a workaround for those
prisoners in the saving clause. With minor differences in
reasoning and wording, they held that §2255 was “inade-
quate and ineffective” under the saving clause—and that
§2241 was therefore available—when AEDPA’s second-or-
successive restrictions barred a prisoner from seeking relief
based on a newly adopted narrowing interpretation of a
criminal statute that circuit precedent had foreclosed at the
time of the prisoner’s trial, appeal, and first §2255 motion.
This application of the saving clause took shape in In re
Dorsainvil, 119 F. 3d 245, 251 (CA3 1997); Triestman v.
United States, 124 F. 3d 361, 378–380 (CA2 1997); and In re
Davenport, 147 F. 3d 605, 609–611 (CA7 1998), and it was
later adopted by most of the other Circuits. See Ivy v. Pon-
tesso, 328 F. 3d 1057, 1059–1060 (CA9 2003); Martin v. Pe-
rez, 319 F. 3d 799, 804–805 (CA6 2003); Reyes–Requena v.
United States, 243 F. 3d 893, 904 (CA5 2001); In re Jones,
226 F. 3d 328, 333–334 (CA4 2000); Wofford v. Scott, 177
F. 3d 1236, 1242–1245 (CA11 1999), overruled by McCar-
than v. Director of Goodwill Industries–Suncoast, Inc., 851
F. 3d 1076 (CA11 2017) (en banc); but see Prost v. Anderson,
636 F. 3d 578, 584–595 (CA10 2011) (Gorsuch, J.) (holding
10 JONES v. HENDRIX
Opinion of the Court
that §2255(e) does not permit recourse to §2241 in these cir-
cumstances).
We now hold that the saving clause does not authorize
such an end-run around AEDPA. In §2255(h), Congress
enumerated two—and only two—conditions in which a sec-
ond or successive §2255 motion may proceed. Because
§2255 is the ordinary vehicle for a collateral attack on a fed-
eral sentence, the straightforward negative inference from
§2255(h) is that a second or successive collateral attack on
a federal sentence is not authorized unless one of those two
conditions is satisfied. See Jennings v. Rodriguez, 583 U. S.
___, ___ (2018) (slip op., at 16) (“ ‘The expression of one thing
implies the exclusion of others’ ” (quoting A. Scalia & B.
Garner, Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts
107 (2012))). Even more directly, §2255(h)(2)’s authoriza-
tion of a successive collateral attack based on new rules “of
constitutional law” implies that Congress did not authorize
successive collateral attacks based on new rules of noncon-
stitutional law. Had Congress wished to omit the word
“constitutional,” it easily could have done so.
The saving clause does not undermine this strong nega-
tive inference. Basic principles of statutory interpretation
require that we construe the saving clause and §2255(h) in
harmony, not set them at cross-purposes. See, e.g., United
States v. Fausto, 484 U. S. 439, 453 (1988); Bend v. Hoyt, 13
Pet. 263, 272 (1839) (Story, J.). That task is not difficult
given the distinct concerns of the two provisions. Subsec-
tion (h) presumes—as part of its background—that federal
prisoners’ collateral attacks on their sentences are gov-
erned by §2255, and it proceeds to specify when a second or
successive collateral attack is permitted. The saving clause
has nothing to say about that question. Rather, like sub-
section (e) generally, it addresses the antecedent question
of the relationship between §§2241 and 2255.
After AEDPA, as before it, the saving clause preserves
recourse to §2241 in cases where unusual circumstances
Cite as: 599 U. S. ____ (2023) 11
Opinion of the Court
make it impossible or impracticable to seek relief in the sen-
tencing court, as well as for challenges to detention other
than collateral attacks on a sentence. Because AEDPA did
not alter the text of §2255(e), there is little reason to think
that it altered the pre-existing division of labor between
§§2241 and 2255. AEDPA’s new restrictions on §2255,
therefore, are best understood as just that—restrictions on
§2255—not as expansions of §2241’s applicability.
Any other reading would make AEDPA curiously self-
defeating. It would mean that, by expressly excluding sec-
ond or successive §2255 motions based on nonconstitutional
legal developments, Congress accomplished nothing in
terms of actually limiting such claims. Instead, it would
have merely rerouted them from one remedial vehicle and
venue to another. Stranger still, Congress would have pro-
vided “a superior remedy” for the very nonconstitutional
claims it chose not to include in §2255(h). McCarthan, 851
F. 3d, at 1091. After escaping §2255 through the saving
clause, nonconstitutional claims would no longer be subject
to AEDPA’s other express procedural restrictions: the 1-
year limitations period, see §2255(f ), and the requirement
that a prisoner obtain a certificate of appealability before
appealing an adverse decision in the District Court, see
§2253(c)(1).3 We generally “resist attributing to Congress
an intention to render a statute so internally inconsistent.”
Greenlaw v. United States, 554 U. S. 237, 251 (2008).
That resistance is particularly acute here, where allow-
ing nonconstitutional claims to proceed under §2241 would
mean “resurrecting the very problems §2255 was supposed
——————
3 It is no answer to say that the saving clause must apply sometimes
and that these procedural restrictions are inapplicable whenever it does.
Cf. Reply Brief for Petitioner 12; Reply Brief for Respondent 9–10. Al-
lowing second or successive nonconstitutional claims to circumvent
§2255(h) under the saving clause would confer favored treatment for
nonconstitutional claims as a class, a result directly at odds with the
manifest tenor of §2255(h).
12 JONES v. HENDRIX
Opinion of the Court
to put to rest.” Wright v. Spaulding, 939 F. 3d 695, 707
(CA6 2019) (Thapar, J., concurring). Section 2255 owes its
existence to Congress’ pragmatic judgment that the sen-
tencing court, not the District Court for the district of con-
finement, is the best venue for a federal prisoner’s collateral
attack on his sentence. Channeling a particular class of
second or successive attacks back into §2241 would mean
once again “[c]oncentrat[ing] ‘an inordinate number of ha-
beas corpus actions’ in districts with large prison popula-
tions ” and requiring District Courts “to review each other’s
proceedings—often without access to the witnesses, the
sources of evidence, or other local information that may be
critical.” Id., at 707–708 (quoting Hayman, 342 U. S., at
214). “The illogical results of applying such an interpreta-
tion . . . argue strongly against the conclusion that Con-
gress intended these results.” Western Air Lines, Inc. v.
Board of Equalization of S. D., 480 U. S. 123, 133 (1987).
Here, as often is the case, the best interpretation is the
straightforward one. Section 2255(h) specifies the two lim-
ited conditions in which Congress has permitted federal
prisoners to bring second or successive collateral attacks on
their sentences. The inability of a prisoner with a statutory
claim to satisfy those conditions does not mean that he can
bring his claim in a habeas petition under the saving clause.
It means that he cannot bring it at all. Congress has chosen
finality over error correction in his case.
III
Resisting this reading, Jones and the United States both
argue that §2255(h)’s exclusion of statutory claims some-
times renders §2255 inadequate or ineffective, though they
advance different theories of when and why it does so.
Their arguments are unpersuasive.
A
Jones begins with a textual interpretation of the saving
Cite as: 599 U. S. ____ (2023) 13
Opinion of the Court
clause that, if accepted, would convert §2255(e) into a li-
cense for unbounded error correction. He argues that §2255
is necessarily “inadequate or ineffective to test” a prisoner’s
claim if the §2255 court fails to apply the correct substan-
tive law. This argument ignores that the saving clause is
concerned with the adequacy or effectiveness of the reme-
dial vehicle (“the remedy by motion”), not any court’s as-
serted errors of law. Cf. Swain v. Pressley, 430 U. S. 372,
383 (1977) (holding a District of Columbia-court remedy
modeled on §2255 not to be “ ‘inadequate or ineffective’ ” be-
cause the D. C. courts were “competent to decide all is-
sues”). Even when “circuit law is inadequate or deficient”
because a Court of Appeals’ precedents have resolved a le-
gal issue incorrectly, that is not a fault in “the §2255 reme-
dial vehicle” itself.4 Prost, 636 F. 3d, at 590.
Next, Jones offers a wide-ranging discussion of the con-
cept of “inadequacy” as a term of art in traditional equity
jurisprudence. While Jones demonstrates that courts of eq-
uity would afford relief from “inadequate” legal remedies in
——————
4 Despite occasional gestures in its direction, and despite its critical
role in persuading the Courts of Appeals to expand the saving clause,
Jones’ textual arguments place relatively little emphasis on whether
binding precedent foreclosed a prisoner’s statutory argument at trial, on
appeal, and in an initial §2255 motion. See In re Davenport, 147 F. 3d
605, 610–611 (CA7 1998) (making such foreclosure an express precondi-
tion of saving-clause relief ); see also Triestman v. United States, 124
F. 3d 361, 380 (CA2 1997) (emphasizing that the prisoner “had no [prior]
effective opportunity to raise his [Bailey] claim”); In re Dorsainvil, 119
F. 3d 245, 251 (CA3 1997) (similar). Rather, under Jones’ interpretation
of “test,” it appears that §2241 would be available to correct any asserted
error of law by a §2255 court, even on an issue of first impression. Un-
tenable as that consequence is, the erroneous-foreclosure approach fares
no better. To hold that binding precedent renders a judicial proceeding
“ ‘inadequate or ineffective’ to test the rights of parties” would be a shock
for “our entire justice system,” in which “precedent is ubiquitous.”
Wright v. Spaulding, 939 F. 3d 695, 709 (CA6 2019) (Thapar, J., concur-
ring). Nothing in the text or history of the saving clause suggests that it
uniquely embodies that far-reaching proposition.
14 JONES v. HENDRIX
Opinion of the Court
a broad range of circumstances, we find this excursus irrel-
evant to the question presented here. To the extent that
Congress’ use of “inadequate” in the saving clause harkens
back to equity’s historic use of that term (an issue we need
not address), the most Jones’ evidence proves is that a va-
riety of circumstances might make it impracticable for a
prisoner to seek relief from the sentencing court. Cf. Hay-
man, 342 U. S., at 215, n. 23. Nothing in Jones’ survey of
equity jurisprudence, however, even begins to suggest that
the saving clause offers an exemption from AEDPA’s clear
limits on second or successive collateral attacks.
Trying a different tack, Jones suggests that the saving
clause’s use of the present tense (“is inadequate or ineffec-
tive”) means that §2241 is available whenever a prisoner is
presently unable to file a §2255 motion. Even the Circuits
with an expansive view of the saving clause have uniformly
rejected this argument, and for good reason. See, e.g., In re
Jones, 226 F. 3d, at 333; Dorsainvil, 119 F. 3d, at 251. Were
this argument accepted, AEDPA’s changes to §2255 would
be entirely futile, as §2241 would be available any time the
second-or-successive restrictions precluded relief. We de-
cline to infer that Congress intended AEDPA’s carefully
crafted limits on collateral relief under §2255 to be mere
nullities.
As a backstop to his scattershot textual arguments, Jones
invokes the constitutional-doubt canon, arguing that deny-
ing him the chance to raise his Rehaif claim in a §2241 pe-
tition raises serious constitutional questions. It does not.5
——————
5 As Court-appointed amicus curiae observes, Jones’ use of the
constitutional-doubt canon is somewhat anomalous, in that it aims at a
different result from what a direct constitutional challenge would
achieve. If a prisoner persuaded a court that the exclusion of statutory
claims from §2255(h) was unconstitutional, the result would not be that
he could proceed under §2241, but simply that he could file a second or
successive §2255 motion on an equal footing with §§2255(h)(1) and
2255(h)(2) claims.
Cite as: 599 U. S. ____ (2023) 15
Opinion of the Court
Jones’ primary constitutional argument is that denying
him any opportunity to seek postconviction relief based on
Rehaif would violate the Suspension Clause, which pro-
vides that “[t]he Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus
shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion
or Invasion the public Safety may require it.” U. S. Const.,
Art. I, §9, cl. 2. This “Suspension Clause argument fails be-
cause it would extend the writ of habeas corpus far beyond
its scope ‘when the Constitution was drafted and ratified.’ ”
Department of Homeland Security v. Thuraissigiam, 591
U. S. ___, ___ (2020) (slip op., at 2) (quoting Boumediene v.
Bush, 553 U. S. 723, 746 (2008)). When the Suspension
Clause was adopted, and for a long time afterward, Jones’
Rehaif claim would not have been cognizable in habeas at
all.
At the founding, a sentence after conviction “by a court of
competent jurisdiction” was “ ‘in itself sufficient cause’ ” for
a prisoner’s continued detention. Brown v. Davenport, 596
U. S. ___, ___ (2022) (slip op., at 8) (quoting Ex parte Wat-
kins, 3 Pet. 193, 202 (1830)). As Chief Justice Marshall ex-
plained in the seminal case of Ex parte Watkins, the crimi-
nal judgment, “in its nature, conclude[d] the subject on
which it [was] rendered,” “pronounce[d] the law of the case,”
and “pu[t] an end to the inquiry concerning fact.” Id., at
202–203. Of particular relevance here, a habeas court had
no power to “look beyond the judgment” to “re-examine the
charges on which it was rendered” for substantive errors of
law—even “if . . . the [sentencing] court ha[d] misconstrued
the law, and ha[d] pronounced an offence to be punishable
criminally, which [was] not so.” Id., at 202, 209.
In rebuttal, Jones argues that pre-founding practice did
allow habeas courts to “look beyond the judgment” to ensure
that the convicting court had proved every element of the
crime for which a prisoner was committed. But Jones fails
to identify a single clear case of habeas being used to reliti-
gate a conviction after trial by a court of general criminal
16 JONES v. HENDRIX
Opinion of the Court
jurisdiction. Rather, the cases he cites mostly involve com-
mitments by justices of the peace,6 a distinction reflected in
Watkins itself. See id., at 208 (discussing Ex parte Burford,
3 Cranch 448, 453 (1806), where the Court examined on ha-
beas the sufficiency of a warrant of commitment by justices
of the peace while noting that no judgment of a federal court
was in question). At common law, justices of the peace were
not courts of record and did not possess general criminal
jurisdiction. Capital Traction Co. v. Hof, 174 U. S. 1, 16–17
(1899); see also United States v. Mills, 11 App. D. C. 500,
507 (1897). As such, their commitments were “not placed
on the same high ground with the judgments of a court of
record,” and the fact that superior courts sometimes used
habeas to examine commitments by such inferior magis-
trates furnishes “no authority for inquiring into the judg-
ments of a court of general criminal jurisdiction.” Watkins,
3 Pet., at 209.
Jones also appeals to Bushell’s Case, Vaugh. 135, 124
Eng. Rep. 1006 (C. P. 1670), which has long been under-
stood as a case about the independence of criminal juries in
determining questions of fact. Clark v. United States, 289
U. S. 1, 16–17 (1933); see also Sparf v. United States, 156
U. S. 51, 90–93 (1895); 1 J. Stephen, A History of the Crim-
inal Law of England 375 (1883) (Stephen). There, a judge
fined and imprisoned the members of a jury for acquitting
William Penn and William Mead on indictments for “assem-
bling unlawfully and tumultuously,” a verdict ostensibly
against the “manifest evidence.” Vaugh., at 137, 124 Eng.
Rep., at 1007. A juror refused to pay the fine, applied to the
——————
6 See Rex v. Brown, 8 T. R. 26, 101 Eng. Rep. 1247 (1798); Rex v. Hall,
1 Cowp. 60, 98 Eng. Rep. 967 (1774); Rex v. Hall, 3 Burr. 1636, 97 Eng.
Rep. 1022 (1765); Rex v. Collier, 1 Wils. K. B. 332, 95 Eng. Rep. 647
(1752). The cursory report in Rex v. Catherall, 2 Str. 900, 93 Eng. Rep.
967 (1730), is silent as to the authority under which the petitioner was
convicted, and so cannot help Jones overcome Watkins.
Cite as: 599 U. S. ____ (2023) 17
Opinion of the Court
Court of Common Pleas for a writ of habeas corpus, and ob-
tained discharge in an opinion by Chief Justice Vaughn.
Jones points to one part of Vaughn’s opinion, which criti-
cized the return of the writ for not specifying that the jurors
“kn[e]w and believe[d] th[e] evidence to be full and manifest
against the indicted persons,” without which the jurors’ ver-
dict was “no cause of fine or imprisonment.” Id., at 142, 124
Eng. Rep., at 1009. Jones asks us to read this passage as
reflecting a supposed common-law rule that habeas relief
was available whenever a convicting court had not found
the necessary mens rea of a crime. That reading, however,
entirely misses the actual basis of Vaughn’s opinion, which
was the judge’s absolute want of power to question the
jury’s determination of the facts. See id., at 149, 124 Eng.
Rep., at 1013 (“It is absurd a jury should be fined by the
Judge for going against their evidence, when he who fineth
knows not what it is . . . . [I]f it be demanded, what is the
fact? the Judge cannot answer it”); see also Stephen 375
(“[T]he judges who heard the argument . . . decided that the
discretion of the jury to believe the evidence or not could not
be questioned”). Thus, Bushell’s Case no more undermines
Watkins than do the justice-of-the-peace cases.
The principles of Watkins guided this Court’s under-
standing of the habeas writ throughout the 19th century
and well into the 20th. See Brown, 596 U. S., at ___, n. 1
(slip op., at 9, n. 1) (collecting cases); see also Johnson v.
Zerbst, 304 U. S. 458, 465–466 (1938). Even in Ex parte
Siebold, 100 U. S. 371 (1880), which held that the constitu-
tionality of a prisoner’s statute of conviction could be re-
viewed on habeas (as going to jurisdiction),7 the Court
——————
7 The Court seemingly abandoned that notion in Glasgow v. Moyer, 225
U. S. 420 (1912), which explained that “[t]he principle” that nonjurisdic-
tional errors of substantive law are not cognizable in habeas “is not the
less applicable because the law which was the foundation of the indict-
ment and trial is asserted to be unconstitutional . . . . [I]f a court has
jurisdiction of the case the writ of habeas corpus cannot be employed to
18 JONES v. HENDRIX
Opinion of the Court
acknowledged Watkins and took pains to reconcile its hold-
ing with the traditional rule. See 100 U. S., at 375–377.
And, when asked to review convicting courts’ substantive
errors of statutory law in habeas corpus proceedings, this
Court consistently held that it could not do so.8 It was not
——————
re-try the issues, whether of law, constitutional or otherwise, or of fact.”
Id., at 429 (emphasis added).
8 See, e.g., Knewel v. Egan, 268 U. S. 442, 446 (1925) (“It is fundamen-
tal that a court upon which is conferred jurisdiction to try an offense has
jurisdiction to determine whether or not that offense is charged or
proved”); In re Gregory, 219 U. S. 210, 213 (1911) (“[W]e are not con-
cerned with the question whether the information was sufficient or
whether the acts set forth in the agreed statement constituted a crime,
that is to say, whether the court properly applied the law, if it be found
that the court had jurisdiction to try the issues and to render the judg-
ment”); In re Eckart, 166 U. S. 481, 483 (1897) (explaining that habeas
would not offer relief from “a trial and conviction upon an indictment,
the facts averred in which are asserted to be insufficient to constitute an
offence against the statute claimed to have been violated”); Ex parte Yar-
brough, 110 U. S. 651, 654 (1884) (“Whether the indictment sets forth in
comprehensive terms the offence which the statute describes and forbids
. . . is in every case a question of law . . . within [the trial court’s] juris-
diction”); Ex parte Parks, 93 U. S. 18, 20–21 (1876) (“It would be an as-
sumption of authority for this court, by means of the writ of habeas cor-
pus, to review every case in which the defendant attempts to controvert
the criminality of the offence charged in the indictment”).
Ignoring this authority, JUSTICE JACKSON’s dissent cites a handful of
inapposite cases to suggest that 19th-century American courts would
have treated claims such as Jones’ as cognizable in habeas. See post, at
31–32, n. 19, 34, 36–37, n. 25. Grant v. United States, 58 F. 694 (CA9
1893), was a case on a writ of error, not habeas corpus. Ex parte D’Oli-
vera, 7 F. Cas. 853 (No. 3,967) (CC Mass. 1813), was another justice-of-
the-peace case. Ex parte Randolph, 20 F. Cas. 242, 254 (No. 11,558) (CC
Va. 1833), involved detention unsupported by any “judgment” or “judicial
process” whatsoever. United States v. Bainbridge, 24 F. Cas. 946 (No.
14,497) (CC Mass. 1816), involved a collateral attack on a sentence im-
posed by a naval court martial; Justice Story’s opinion turned on the va-
lidity of the petitioner’s contract of enlistment, which, in turn, went to
the court martial’s jurisdiction. Id., at 949–952; see also Ex parte Wat-
kins, 3 Pet 193, 209 (1830); Wise v. Withers, 3 Cranch 331, 337 (1806).
Ex parte Bollman, 4 Cranch 75 (1807), relieved two alleged traitors from
Cite as: 599 U. S. ____ (2023) 19
Opinion of the Court
until 1974, in Davis, that the Court broke with that tradi-
tion, holding for the first time that a substantive error of
statutory law could be a cognizable ground for a collateral
attack on a federal court’s criminal judgment. See 417
U. S., at 342–347.
The Suspension Clause does not constitutionalize that in-
novation of nearly two centuries later. Nor, a fortiori, does
it require the extension of that innovation to a second or
successive collateral attack.
Jones’ remaining constitutional arguments are no more
persuasive. He argues that denying him a new opportunity
for collateral review of his Rehaif claim threatens separation-
of-powers principles—specifically, Congress’ exclusive
power to define crimes Cf. United States v. Hudson, 7
Cranch 32, 34 (1812). But the authority to determine the
facts and the law in an individual case, and to render a fi-
nal, binding judgment based on those determinations,
stands at the core of the judicial power. See Plaut v. Spend-
thrift Farm, Inc., 514 U. S. 211, 218–219 (1995); Watkins, 3
Pet., at 202–203. A court does not usurp legislative power
simply by misinterpreting the law in a given case. See id.,
at 206 (“If its judgment was erroneous, a point which this
court does not determine, still it is a judgment”).
——————
pretrial orders of commitment on the ground that there was “not suffi-
cient evidence . . . to justify [their] commitment on the charge of treason.”
Id., at 135. Matter of Corryell, 22 Cal. 178 (1863), granted relief from a
pretrial order of commitment after holding that the acts of which the pe-
titioner stood accused did not constitute the charged crime. Id., at 180,
183. (Incidentally, this use of habeas was not free from controversy. See,
e.g., In re Hacker, 73 F. 464, 465–469 (SD Cal. 1896); “In re Kearney,”
The Writ of Habeas Corpus—Its Uses and Abuses, 5 Pac. Coast L. J. 549,
565–570 (1880).) Finally, In re Wahll, 42 F. 822 (D. Minn. 1890), consid-
ered but rejected a similar argument for ordering pretrial release. Id.,at 824–826. In sum, like Jones’ pre-founding English cases, the dissent’s
19th-century American cases include no example in which a prisoner un-
der sentence of a court of general criminal jurisdiction was permitted to
relitigate the elements of his offense on habeas corpus.
20 JONES v. HENDRIX
Opinion of the Court
Next, Jones points to Fiore v. White, 531 U. S. 225 (2001)
(per curiam), which applied the rule that due process re-
quires that the prosecution prove every element of a crime
beyond a reasonable doubt. See id., at 228–229. Whether
a due process error has occurred at trial, however, is an en-
tirely different issue from Congress’ power to restrict collat-
eral review. Due process does not guarantee a direct ap-
peal, McKane v. Durston, 153 U. S. 684, 687 (1894), let
alone the opportunity to have legal issues redetermined in
successive collateral attacks on a final sentence.
Jones’ last constitutional contention—that the Eighth
Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punish-
ments may entitle him to another round of collateral re-
view—fails for a similar reason. By its terms, the Cruel and
Unusual Punishments Clause expresses a substantive con-
straint on the kinds of punishments governments may “in-
flic[t].” It creates no freestanding entitlement to a second
or successive round of postconviction review, and thus it
adds nothing to Jones’ unavailing Suspension Clause argu-
ment.
B
The Government agrees with the Eighth Circuit that
Jones is not entitled to relief, but, somewhat surprisingly,
it asks us to adopt a novel, alternative interpretation of the
saving clause, which it constructs via a roundabout argu-
ment. It begins with the premise that the words “inade-
quate or ineffective” imply reference to a “benchmark” of
adequacy and effectiveness. It proceeds to identify that
benchmark as the ability to test the types of claims cogniza-
ble under the general habeas statutes—specifically, those
governing federal habeas petitions by state prisoners. The
Government then reasons that §2255(h)’s limitations on
second or successive motions asserting newly discovered ev-
idence or new rules of constitutional law do not trigger the
Cite as: 599 U. S. ____ (2023) 21
Opinion of the Court
saving clause because Congress has imposed analogous lim-
itations on analogous claims by state prisoners and—by do-
ing so—has redefined §2255(e)’s implicit habeas benchmark
with respect to such “factual” and “constitutional” claims.
See 28 U. S. C. §§2244(b)(2)(A)–(B). Since, the Government
asserts, Congress has imposed no analogous limitation on
statutory claims by state prisoners, it has not redefined the
implicit habeas benchmark with respect to statutory claims
like Jones’. And, we should be unwilling to infer that
AEDPA limited such claims without a clearer textual indi-
cation. The Government concludes that §2255(h) renders
§2255 “inadequate or ineffective to test” a federal prisoner’s
statutory claim in cases where the prisoner has already
filed one §2255 motion and the claim otherwise satisfies
pre-AEDPA habeas principles, which generally will require
“a ‘colorable showing of factual innocence.’ ” McCleskey v.
Zant, 499 U. S. 467, 495 (1991) (quoting Kuhlmann v. Wil-
son, 477 U. S. 436, 454 (1986) (plurality opinion)).9
——————
9 The Government also argues that Davis v. United States, 417 U. S.
333 (1974), and Sunal v. Large, 332 U. S. 174 (1947), read together, dic-
tate that only an intervening decision of this Court, rather than a Court
of Appeals, can work such a change in the law as to justify an otherwise-
barred §2241 petition. But this attempt to articulate an additional lim-
iting principle for the Government’s theory requires turning the cases
inside out. In Davis, where this Court allowed a statutory claim to pro-
ceed under §2255, the relevant narrowing decision came from the Ninth
Circuit. See 417 U. S., at 341 (discussing United States v. Fox, 454 F. 2d
593 (CA9 1971)). In Sunal, where two petitioners’ statutory claims were
barred from proceeding in habeas, it was this Court that had issued the
relevant decision. See 332 U. S., at 176 (discussing Estep v. United
States, 327 U. S. 114 (1946)). As we have recognized, see Reed v. Farley,
512 U. S. 339, 354 (1994), the holding of Sunal rested on what we would
today call the petitioners’ procedural default without cause: By not ap-
pealing their convictions, they had forfeited the argument that ended up
prevailing in Estep, and they had shown no “exceptional circumstances
which excuse[d] their failure” to appeal. 332 U. S., at 183–184. The
Sunal Court thus had no occasion to definitively resolve whether the pe-
titioners’ claims would have been cognizable in habeas but for their de-
22 JONES v. HENDRIX
Opinion of the Court
This elaborate theory is no more convincing than Jones’
arguments. Its most striking flaw is the seemingly arbi-
trary linkage it posits between the saving clause and state
prisoners’ statutory postconviction remedies. While it is
true that §2255, as enacted, afforded the same rights fed-
eral prisoners previously enjoyed under the general habeas
statutes, see Hayman, 342 U. S., at 219, nothing in §2255’s
text, structure, or history suggests that Congress intended
any part of it to implicitly cross-reference whatever modifi-
cations to state prisoners’ postconviction remedies might be
made in the future. Understanding the saving clause to do
so would have highly counterintuitive implications: On the
Government’s view, §§2255(h)(1) and (h)(2) do not create an
adequacy or effectiveness problem only because of the par-
allel state-prisoner provisions in §2244(b). It seems to fol-
low that if Congress relaxed §2244(b)’s second-or-successive
restrictions for state prisoners tomorrow, and did nothing
else, §2255 would suddenly become “inadequate or ineffec-
tive to test” at least some second or successive fact-based
claims that did not satisfy §2255(h)(1) or constitutional
claims that did not satisfy §2255(h)(2), and that those
claims would then be allowed to proceed under §2241. We
see no indication that the spare language of the saving
clause creates such a Rube Goldberg contrivance, whereby
changes to other statutory provisions (which do not apply
to federal prisoners at all) could flow back into §2255 and
undermine §2255(h).
In any event, as the Government acknowledges, a state
prisoner could never bring a pure statutory-error claim in
federal habeas, because “ ‘federal habeas corpus relief does
——————
fault. And, to the extent Sunal addressed that question in dicta, it ap-
peared to be of two minds. See id., at 181–183 (suggesting, in a single
unelaborated sentence, that the petitioners’ “cases would be quite differ-
ent” had they appealed and lost, then spending two paragraphs empha-
sizing that the trial courts’ “error of law” was neither jurisdictional nor
constitutional).
Cite as: 599 U. S. ____ (2023) 23
Opinion of the Court
not lie for errors of state law.’ ” Estelle v. McGuire, 502 U. S.
62, 67 (1991) (quoting Lewis v. Jeffers, 497 U. S. 764, 780
(1990)). As a result, it is unclear what work the Govern-
ment’s state-prisoner-habeas benchmark is even doing in
its answer to the question presented here.
Rather, the narrow base on which the Government’s top-
heavy theory ultimately turns out to rest is its assertion
that §2255(h) is simply not clear enough to support the in-
ference that Congress entirely closed the door on pure stat-
utory claims not brought in a federal prisoner’s initial
§2255 motion. See Brief for Respondent 28–29, 39. That
assertion is unpersuasive for the reasons we have already
explained: §2255(h) specifies the two circumstances in
which a second or successive collateral attack on a federal
sentence is available, and those circumstances do not in-
clude an intervening change in statutory interpretation.
The Government asserts that we require “the clearest
command” before construing AEDPA to “close [the] court-
house doors” on “a strong equitable claim” for relief. Hol-
land v. Florida, 560 U. S. 631, 646, 649 (2010) (internal
quotation marks omitted). The only two cases the Govern-
ment relies on for its clear-statement rule do not sweep as
broadly as it suggests. In Holland, we applied the general
presumption of equitable tolling to AEDPA’s 1-year statute
of limitations for state prisoners’ habeas claims. Id., at
645–649. Afterward, in McQuiggin v. Perkins, 569 U. S.
383 (2013), we held that “a convincing showing of actual in-
nocence” could enable a prisoner to evade AEDPA’s statute
of limitations entirely. Id., at 386.
Undoubtedly, McQuiggin’s assertion of equitable author-
ity to override clear statutory text was a bold one. But even
taking Holland and McQuiggin for all they are worth, there
is a significant difference between reading equitable excep-
tions into a statute of limitations, on the one hand, and de-
manding a clear statement before foreclosing workarounds
to AEDPA’s second-or-successive restrictions, on the other.
24 JONES v. HENDRIX
Opinion of the Court
Statutes of limitations merely govern the timeframe for
bringing a claim. AEDPA’s second-or-successive re-
strictions, by contrast, “constitute a modified res judicata
rule,” Felker v. Turpin, 518 U. S. 651, 664 (1996), and thus
embody Congress’ judgment regarding the central policy
question of postconviction remedies—the appropriate bal-
ance between finality and error correction. Insisting on a
heightened standard of clarity in this context would effec-
tively mean adopting a presumption against finality as a
substantive value. We decline to do so. “[T]he United
States has an interest in the finality of sentences imposed
by its own courts,” Johnson v. United States, 544 U. S. 295,
309 (2005), and how to balance that interest against error
correction is a “judgmen[t] about the proper scope of the
writ” that is “ ‘normally for Congress to make.’ ” Felker, 518
U. S., at 664 (quoting Lonchar v. Thomas, 517 U. S. 314,
323 (1996)).
Accepting the Government’s proposal to apply a clear-
statement rule would be particularly anomalous in light of
the precise question this case presents. Typically, we find
clear-statement rules appropriate when a statute impli-
cates historically or constitutionally grounded norms that
we would not expect Congress to unsettle lightly. See, e.g.,
Alabama Assn. of Realtors v. Department of Health and Hu-
man Servs., 594 U. S. ___, ___ (2021) (per curiam) (slip op.,
at 6) (presumption that Congress does not casually assign
executive agencies “powers of vast economic and political
significance” or “significantly alter the balance between fed-
eral and state power” (internal quotation marks omitted));
Landgraf v. USI Film Products, 511 U. S. 244, 265–266
(1994) (presumption against statutory retroactivity); Atas-
cadero State Hospital v. Scanlon, 473 U. S. 234, 243 (1985)
(presumption against abrogation of state sovereign immun-
ity). But, as shown above in discussing Jones’ Suspension
Clause argument, there is no historical or constitutional
norm of permitting one convicted of a crime by a court of
Cite as: 599 U. S. ____ (2023) 25
Opinion of the Court
competent jurisdiction to collaterally attack his sentence
based on an alleged error of substantive statutory law. As
far as history and the Constitution are concerned, “there is
nothing incongruous about a system in which this kind of
error—the application of a since-rejected statutory inter-
pretation—cannot be remedied after final judgment.”
George v. McDonough, 596 U. S. ___, ___ (2022) (slip op., at
10). A fortiori, there is nothing fundamentally surprising
about Congress declining to make such errors remediable
in a second or successive collateral attack.
IV
We affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals.
It is so ordered.
Cite as: 599 U. S. ____ (2023) 1
SOTOMAYOR and K,AGAN
SOTOMAYOR J., dissenting
, JJ., dissenting
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
_________________
No. 21–857
_________________
MARCUS DEANGELO JONES, PETITIONER v.
DEWAYNE HENDRIX, WARDEN
ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF
APPEALS FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT
[June 22, 2023]
JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR and JUSTICE KAGAN, dissenting.
We respectfully dissent. As JUSTICE JACKSON explains,
today’s decision yields disturbing results. See post, at 23–
25 (dissenting opinion). A prisoner who is actually inno-
cent, imprisoned for conduct that Congress did not crimi-
nalize, is forever barred by 28 U. S. C. §2255(h) from raising
that claim, merely because he previously sought postconvic-
tion relief. It does not matter that an intervening decision
of this Court confirms his innocence. By challenging his
conviction once before, he forfeited his freedom.
Though we agree with JUSTICE JACKSON that this is not
the scheme Congress designed, we see the matter as the So-
licitor General does. As all agree, Congress enacted §2255
to “afford federal prisoners a remedy identical in scope to
federal habeas corpus.” Davis v. United States, 417 U. S.
333, 343 (1974). To ensure that equivalence, Congress built
in a saving clause, allowing recourse to habeas when the
“remedy by motion” under §2255 is “inadequate or ineffec-
tive” compared to the remedy it replaced: an “application
for a writ of habeas corpus.” §2255(e). So, as this Court has
explained, if §2255 bars a claim cognizable at habeas, such
that the remedies are not “commensurate,” the saving
clause kicks in, and the prisoner may “proceed in federal
habeas corpus.” Sanders v. United States, 373 U. S. 1, 14–
15 (1963); see United States v. Hayman, 342 U. S. 205, 223
2 JONES v. HENDRIX
SOTOMAYOR
SOTOMAYOR , J., dissenting
and KAGAN , JJ., dissenting
(1952).
With that understanding in mind, consider a prisoner
who, having already filed a motion for postconviction relief,
discovers that a new decision of this Court establishes that
his statute of conviction did not cover his conduct. He is out
of luck under §2255, because §2255(h) will bar his claim.
But that claim is cognizable at habeas, where we have long
held that federal prisoners can collaterally attack their con-
victions in successive petitions if they can make a colorable
showing that they are innocent under an intervening deci-
sion of statutory construction. See Davis, 417 U. S., at 344–
347; McCleskey v. Zant, 499 U. S. 467, 493–495 (1991).
Congress did not abrogate that principle in §2255(h). Thus,
we have precisely the kind of mismatch the saving clause
was designed to address.
In this case, the petitioner says he is that prisoner, with
that mismatch. But the Court of Appeals never considered
that question, laboring under a mistaken view of the saving
clause that, like the majority’s, assigns it almost no role.
Accordingly, we would remand for the lower courts to con-
sider the petitioner’s claim under the proper framework.
See Cutter v. Wilkinson, 544 U. S. 709, 718, n. 7 (2005).
Cite as: 599 U. S. ____ (2023) 1
JACKSON, J., dissenting
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
_________________
No. 21–857
_________________
MARCUS DEANGELO JONES, PETITIONER v.
DEWAYNE HENDRIX, WARDEN
ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF
APPEALS FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT
[June 22, 2023]
JUSTICE JACKSON, dissenting.
Today, the Court holds that an incarcerated individual
who has already filed one postconviction petition cannot file
another one to assert a previously unavailable claim of stat-
utory innocence.1 The majority says that result follows
from a “straightforward” reading of 28 U. S. C. §2255. Ante,
at 10, 12. But the majority reaches this preclusion decision
by “negative inference.” Ante, at 10. And it is far from ob-
vious that §2255(h)’s bar on filing second or successive post-
conviction petitions (with certain notable exceptions) pre-
vents a prisoner who has previously sought postconviction
relief from bringing a newly available legal innocence claim
in court. See Part II, infra.
In any event, putting aside its questionable interpreta-
tion of §2255(h), the majority is also wrong to interpret
§2255(e)—known as the saving clause—as if Congress de-
signed that provision to filter potential habeas claims
through the narrowest of apertures, saving essentially only
those that a court literally would be unable to consider due
to something akin to a natural calamity. See Part I, infra.
This stingy characterization does not reflect a primary aim
——————
1 I use the terms “statutory innocence” and “legal innocence” in this
opinion interchangeably. Both refer to a situation where an individual
was convicted under a statute that, properly interpreted, did not reach
his conduct.
2 JONES v. HENDRIX
JACKSON, J., dissenting
of §2255(e), which was to “save” any claim that was availa-
ble prior to §2255(h)’s enactment where Congress has not
expressed a clear intent to foreclose it. Jones’s legal inno-
cence claim fits that mold.
I am also deeply troubled by the constitutional implica-
tions of the nothing-to-see-here approach that the majority
takes with respect to the incarceration of potential legal in-
nocents. See Part III, infra. Apparently, legally innocent
or not, Jones must just carry on in prison regardless, since
(as the majority reads §2255) no path exists for him to ask
a federal judge to consider his innocence assertion. But for-
ever slamming the courtroom doors to a possibly innocent
person who has never had a meaningful opportunity to get
a new and retroactively applicable claim for release re-
viewed on the merits raises serious constitutional concerns.
Thus, in my view, all roads lead to an interpretation of
§2255 that is diametrically opposed to the one that the ma-
jority announces. Whether one gets there by virtue of a
proper reading of §2255(e) or an informed understanding of
§2255(h), or by affording due respect to the core constitu-
tional interests at stake, Jones’s successive petition alleg-
ing legal innocence should have been considered on the
merits.2 Therefore, I respectfully dissent.
I
Section 2255(e) saves postconviction claims by authoriz-
ing the filing of a habeas petition under §2241 if the proce-
dures §2255 affords are “inadequate or ineffective to test
the legality of [a prisoner’s] detention.” §2255(e). I see no
reason why the only circumstance in which §2255’s proce-
dures qualify as inadequate or ineffective for saving clause
purposes is when it is impossible or impractical for a pris-
oner to file a §2255 motion. Contra, ante, at 6–7. Quite to
——————
2 I take no position as to whether Jones’s legal innocence claim is actu-
ally meritorious. This case is about whether §2255 should be interpreted
to prevent him from bringing the claim to a court in the first place.
Cite as: 599 U. S. ____ (2023) 3
JACKSON, J., dissenting
the contrary, the enactment history of §2255 plainly estab-
lishes that Congress wanted to ensure that a prisoner’s
claim was “saved” in at least one additional set of circum-
stances: Where the prisoner would have been able to bring
such a claim prior to the enactment of §2255 (or any subse-
quent changes, like those made by the Antiterrorism and
Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA)), but some-
how cannot bring that claim after a change to the statutory
framework (unless Congress has clearly expressed its in-
tent to restrict the scope of relief in that regard). As the
majority has interpreted §2255(h), that is precisely the sit-
uation here.
A
To understand why Congress meant for Jones to be able
to invoke the saving clause and bring his statutory inno-
cence claim in a habeas petition filed under §2241, a firm
grasp of the text, history, and intended operation of
§2255(e) is required.
1
The saving clause is the latter part of §2255(e), which
states in full:
“An application for a writ of habeas corpus [o]n be-
half of a prisoner who is authorized to apply for relief
by motion pursuant to this section, shall not be enter-
tained if it appears that the applicant has failed to ap-
ply for relief, by motion, to the court which sentenced
him, or that such court has denied him relief, unless it
also appears that the remedy by motion is inadequate
or ineffective to test the legality of his detention.”
§2255(e) (emphasis added); see also §2255 (1946 ed.,
Supp. II) (§2255 (1948)).
Before §2255 was enacted in 1948, federal prisoners collat-
erally attacked their convictions by filing a habeas petition.
See United States v. Hayman, 342 U. S. 205, 210–213
4 JONES v. HENDRIX
JACKSON, J., dissenting
(1952). Such petitions sought judicial review of the legality
of the individual’s detention, and were filed in the district
where the person was incarcerated. Ibid. This led to some
problems: Districts that housed large federal prisons were
disproportionately burdened with habeas petitions. Id., at
213–214. Also, in many cases, the court deciding the peti-
tion was both unfamiliar with the underlying facts and far
away from the relevant record, evidence, and witnesses.
Ibid.Congress created §2255—an entirely new process for fed-
eral prisoners to use when seeking postconviction judicial
review—to solve these practical problems. Ante, at 5–6.
Under the procedures laid out in §2255, in lieu of filing a
traditional habeas petition, federal prisoners must file a
§2255 motion. And any such motion is to be filed in the
sentencing court, not in the district of confinement.
§2255(a) (2018 ed.); see Hayman, 342 U. S., at 219.
Congress crafted (what is now) §2255(e) to ensure that
the new §2255 procedure successfully ousted the outdated
habeas regime it replaced. Per the first part of that provi-
sion, as a general matter, §2255 becomes the exclusive pro-
cedure by which federal prisoners can collaterally attack
their convictions. See §2255(e) (providing that “[a]n appli-
cation for a writ of habeas corpus . . . shall not be enter-
tained” where, in essence, the prisoner fails to bring an au-
thorized §2255 motion, or does so and is denied relief ). Yet
Congress also specified that, in a circumstance in which
§2255 is “inadequate or ineffective to test the legality of his
detention,” an individual could still file a habeas petition.
Ibid.
There are multiple ways in which §2255 might be “insuf-
ficient” or “[n]ot capable of performing the required work”
of postconviction review of federal convictions. Webster’s
New International Dictionary 1254, 1271 (2d ed. 1934) (de-
fining “inadequate” and “ineffective” in this manner); see
Cite as: 599 U. S. ____ (2023) 5
JACKSON, J., dissenting
also Funk & Wagnalls New Standard Dictionary of the Eng-
lish Language 1239, 1255 (1942) (similar). For example,
§2255 would not be up to the task if it would be impossible
or impracticable for a federal prisoner to file a §2255 peti-
tion. Ante, at 6, 11.
The case before us involves another way that §2255 can
be inadequate or ineffective—where the newly created
§2255 procedure, perhaps inadvertently, blocks a prisoner
from bringing a claim that was previously cognizable in ha-
beas. This is an inadequacy concerning the operation of
§2255 from Congress’s perspective, because the “sole pur-
pose” of §2255 “was to minimize the difficulties encountered
in habeas corpus hearings” while still “affording the same
rights in another and more convenient forum.” Hayman,
342 U. S., at 219 (emphasis added); see also Davis v. United
States, 417 U. S. 333, 343 (1974) (“Th[e] history makes clear
that §2255 was intended to afford federal prisoners a rem-
edy identical in scope to federal habeas corpus” (emphasis
added)); Sanders v. United States, 373 U. S. 1, 14 (1963)
(“[I]t conclusively appears from the historic context in
which §2255 was enacted that the legislation was intended
simply to provide in the sentencing court a remedy exactly
commensurate with that which had previously been availa-
ble by habeas corpus” (emphasis added; internal quotation
marks omitted)).
That much is not in dispute—the majority acknowledges
that Congress intended to maintain equivalence with the
claims available in habeas when it enacted §2255. See ante,
5–6. Consequently, in any circumstance in which the new
§2255 procedure actually operates to foreclose a postconvic-
tion claim that a prisoner could have brought previously in
a habeas petition, the §2255 process is patently inadequate
to accomplish Congress’s aim of allowing prisoners to test
the legality of their detention under §2255 to the same ex-
tent as they could have in the habeas regime that §2255
replaced.
6 JONES v. HENDRIX
JACKSON, J., dissenting
Thus, the saving clause can be properly interpreted as ef-
fectuating Congress’s intent in this regard. As the Govern-
ment persuasively argues, by inserting a provision that al-
lows prisoners to still file habeas petitions, Congress
“ensure[d] that Section 2255 does not disadvantage federal
prisoners as compared to habeas.” Brief for Respondent 17;
see also Boumediene v. Bush, 553 U. S. 723, 776 (2008) (not-
ing that the purpose of §2255 was “to strengthen, rather
than dilute, the writ’s protections” and further recognizing
that the saving clause served that purpose). That is, where
a federal prisoner could have brought a particular habeas
claim prior to 1948, but could not bring such a claim in a
§2255 petition after that date, the saving clause kicks in to
permit that individual to resort to habeas to raise that
claim.
This reading of §2255(e) means that the saving clause op-
erates (at the very least, and as it was enacted in 1948) to
preserve from inadvertent extinguishment postconviction
claims that would have been previously cognizable for fed-
eral prisoners but cannot be brought by operation of §2255.
And the flip side of that interpretation—that §2255 is inad-
equate or ineffective if it sub silentio extinguishes previ-
ously available habeas claims, triggering the saving
clause—inexorably follows. This interpretation tracks Con-
gress’s clear claim-preservation goal. And, as an added bo-
nus, it also has the benefit of being in accordance with how
saving clauses usually work. See 2 J. Sutherland, Statu-
tory Construction §4830, pp. 376–377 (3d ed. 1943) (defin-
ing “saving clause” as a provision “said to preserve from de-
struction certain rights, remedies or privileges which would
otherwise be destroyed by the general enactment”); see, e.g.,
Andrus v. Shell Oil Co., 446 U. S. 657, 666 (1980) (noting
that Congress included a “savings clause” in the statute at
issue to “preserv[e] pre-existing claims”); United States v.
Menasche, 348 U. S. 528, 535 (1955) (noting that the pur-
pose of a saving clause in the immigration context was to
Cite as: 599 U. S. ____ (2023) 7
JACKSON, J., dissenting
“manifes[t] a well-established congressional policy not to
strip [noncitizens] of advantages gained under prior laws”).
2
Fast forward to 1996: Congress reenacted the saving
clause—using identical language—when it passed AEDPA.
§2255(e); §2255 (1948). Thus, because the saving clause op-
erated in 1948 to “save” from inadvertent extinguishment
habeas claims that were available before the enactment of
§2255, the same was true when Congress revised those pro-
cedures in the mid-1990s, while keeping the saving clause
intact. In other words, both in 1948 and to this day, the
saving clause operates to (among other things) ensure that
§2255—or the AEDPA amendments—did not, through in-
apt language, substantively alter the scope of available
postconviction relief for federal prisoners.
This is not to say that Congress necessarily carried for-
ward all of its previous policy determinations with respect
to the availability of postconviction claims, or that it did not
change its mind at all about the appropriate dimensions of
postconviction relief. Indeed, habeas is a dynamic remedy,
and congressional enactments contribute to its evolution.
See Felker v. Turpin, 518 U. S. 651, 664 (1996); see also 2
R. Hertz & J. Liebman, Federal Habeas Corpus Practice
and Procedure §28.4[a], p. 1738 (7th ed. 2020) (Hertz &
Liebman) (“Anglo-American law . . . has imposed an evolv-
ing set of restrictions on second and subsequent petitions”).
But, again, the saving clause—which served an important
equalizing function—remained intact when Congress reen-
acted §2255 in 1996. Thus, while Congress can certainly
act to change the scope of habeas or its statutory equivalent
if it wants to do so, in order to overcome the operation of the
saving clause (which, again, was inserted to maintain
equivalence in the absence of intent to make a change),
Congress has to make said change to the availability of
8 JONES v. HENDRIX
JACKSON, J., dissenting
postconviction relief deliberately and clearly, thereby une-
quivocally expressing its intent to do so. See Holland v.
Florida, 560 U. S. 631, 646 (2010); infra, at 25–28.
All this means that today (as in 1948) the saving clause
is best interpreted as allowing for the filing of a habeas pe-
tition under §2241 where a claim that was cognizable prior
to AEDPA cannot be brought under §2255, unless Congress
has clearly expressed its intent to foreclose that particular
claim.
B
That brings us to the situation at issue here. When Con-
gress amended §2255 by enacting AEDPA, it legislated
against a legal background in which a federal prisoner
could bring a statutory innocence claim in a §2255 petition.
The majority does not dispute this. See ante, at 18–19. Nor
could it, because this Court made crystal clear in 1974 in
Davis that statutory innocence claims are legally cogniza-
ble in a §2255 motion. 417 U. S., at 343–347.3
Moreover, prior to AEDPA’s enactment, a federal pris-
oner could bring such a postconviction claim of statutory in-
nocence in a successive petition. This Court had generally
restricted successive postconviction filings by the 1990s,
but a prisoner who had previously filed at least one petition
could still file another one in order to assert innocence.
That was because any bar to the filing of a successive peti-
tion was typically lifted if enforcing that bar would result
in a “miscarriage of justice.” McCleskey v. Zant, 499 U. S.
467, 494–495 (1991); Hertz & Liebman §28.4[g], at 1757;
see Brief for Respondent 22–24. And under our settled
——————
3 In this regard, Davis merely acknowledged what had been true since
the founding. See infra, at 31–34; Davis v. United States, 417 U. S. 333,
343–345 (1974); see also L. Litman, Legal Innocence and Federal Ha-
beas, 104 Va. L. Rev. 417, 488, n. 334 (2018) (“[A]t the time Section 2255
was enacted, federal prisoners could raise a claim, in successive peti-
tions, that they were mistakenly convicted or sentenced because of an
error of statutory interpretation”).
Cite as: 599 U. S. ____ (2023) 9
JACKSON, J., dissenting
precedent, legal innocence claims fit that category. See Da-
vis, 417 U. S., at 346 (“There can be no room for doubt” that
“conviction and punishment . . . for an act that the law does
not make criminal” “ ‘inherently results in a complete mis-
carriage of justice’ ”); see also Bousley v. United States, 523
U. S. 614, 623–624 (1998).
These background principles relate to the successive pe-
tition that Jones seeks to bring here as follows. If the ma-
jority is right that (by virtue of §2255(h)) prisoners like
Jones are now unable to bring a successive §2255 petition
to make the same kind of legal innocence claim that they
could have brought prior to AEDPA, then Congress’s enact-
ment of §2255(h) has dramatically altered the legal land-
scape in a manner that seems, at best, inconsistent with its
original intent. To repeat: The saving clause expresses a
congressional intent to maintain equivalence between what
a prisoner could claim before and after §2255(h); yet under
the majority’s reading, §2255(h)’s “second or successive” bar
would effectively operate to preclude successive legal inno-
cence claims—shrinking the universe of previously availa-
ble claims—the opposite of what Congress set out to do
when it set up §2255.
In my view, that is where the saving clause comes in.
Reading the saving clause to perform its normal, intended
function of “saving” previously available claims solves this
problem, because it allows prisoners who could have
brought a claim prior to the enactment of AEDPA (like
Jones) to file a habeas petition to the extent that §2255 now
precludes such a filing under that particular statutory
mechanism. Thus, interpreting §2255(e)’s “inadequate and
ineffective” language to permit the filing of a habeas peti-
tion that raises a legal innocence claim in these circum-
stances seems perfectly consistent with Congress’s intent.
This understanding of the saving clause also explains the
clause’s application—or, more precisely, its inapplicabil-
ity—to the types of claims specifically mentioned in
10 JONES v. HENDRIX
JACKSON, J., dissenting
§§2255(h)(1) and (2). Congress has expressly overridden
operation of the saving clause with respect to those two pro-
visions, because it has clearly expressed its intent to narrow
the scope of postconviction relief where a federal prisoner
brings a successive petition raising a claim of new evidence
or new constitutional law.4 “A legislature may adopt a pol-
icy different from that embodied in the general saving stat-
ute.” M. Ruud, The Savings Clause—Some Problems in
Construction and Drafting, 33 Texas L. Rev. 285, 299
(1955). And here, no one questions that, with §§2255(h)(1)
and (2), Congress clearly did so. Brief for Respondent 26–
28. But the majority now reasons that, merely by omitting
statutory innocence claims from that authorized-filings list,
Congress should be deemed to have exhibited a narrowing
intent with respect to those claims as well. See ante, at 1–
2, 12.
I disagree. Indeed, in my view, it is precisely because the
text of §§2255(h)(1) and (2) speaks unequivocally to the nar-
rowing Congress wished to effect with respect to new-evi-
dence and new-constitutional claims that we should not as-
certain that Congress meant for the second or successive
bar to have the same effect with respect to legal innocence
——————
4 Prior to AEDPA, an individual who wished to file a successive petition
claiming factual innocence on the basis of new evidence needed only to
show that it was “more likely than not” that the jury would have acquit-
ted him. Schlup v. Delo, 513 U. S. 298, 327 (1995). But, with AEDPA,
Congress narrowed the scope of available relief for factual innocence
claims by requiring prisoners to make their showing by the more strin-
gent “clear and convincing evidence” standard. §2255(h)(1); see also
§2244(b)(2)(B)(ii); 141 Cong. Rec. 15040, 15042 (1995) (statement of Sen.
Levin). Similarly, before AEDPA, an intervening change of circuit prec-
edent arguably could warrant a successive petition raising a new consti-
tutional argument. See Davis, 417 U. S., at 339–341, 346–347; Sanders
v. United States, 373 U. S. 1, 17 (1963); United States v. Nolan, 571 F. 2d
528, 530 (CA10 1978); see also Hertz & Liebman §28.3[c][ii], at 1709–
1710, and n. 108. Yet AEDPA permits successive petitions raising new
constitutional claims only when premised on retroactive Supreme Court
opinions. §§2255(h)(2), 2244(b)(2)(A).
Cite as: 599 U. S. ____ (2023) 11
JACKSON, J., dissenting
claims—which, importantly, the statute does not mention.
To put it bluntly: Congress knows how to speak clearly
when it wants to disrupt the continuity of claims that are
available to prisoners before and after it enacts legislation
that addresses postconviction review procedures. And ra-
ther than providing any such clear statement as to how an
intervening claim of statutory innocence should be treated
vis-à-vis §2255(h)’s second or successive bar, Congress was
conspicuously silent.5
C
The majority advances an entirely different theory of the
work that §2255(e) does with respect to the postconviction
review scheme—a theory that I do not find even remotely
persuasive. Opting for the narrowest possible view of Con-
gress’s intent regarding the saving clause, the majority gen-
erally claims that the saving clause only authorizes the fil-
ing of a habeas petition if filing a §2255 motion would be
“impossible or impracticable.” Ante, at 6, 11. And in the
majority’s telling, that circumstance only occurs, say, if the
courthouse where a §2255 motion would have otherwise
been filed has burned to the ground or been carried away
——————
5 The text of §2255(h) says nothing about legal innocence claims, let
alone clearly expresses an intent to narrow the scope of available post-
conviction relief for that category of claims, in contrast to what the stat-
ute says about claims of new evidence or new constitutional rules. Con-
gress could have easily stated somewhere in §2255(h) or §2244 that “no
circuit or district judge shall be required to consider a second or succes-
sive motion premised only on statutory claims, even claims suggesting
innocence,” or that “a court of appeals shall not certify or authorize a
second or successive §2255 petition that raises a statutory claim only.”
Yet nothing close to this kind of language, or distinction, appears on the
face of the statute. Nor does an intent to foreclose statutory innocence
claims appear in the legislative history of §2255(h), even though that his-
tory does clearly reflect a congressional intent to narrow the scope of
postconviction relief for the categories expressly mentioned in
§§2255(h)(1) and (2) (like new evidence claims), see, e.g., 141 Cong. Rec.,
at 15040, 15042 (statement of Sen. Levin).
12 JONES v. HENDRIX
JACKSON, J., dissenting
by a mudslide. The majority’s parsimonious perspective on
the meaning of “inadequate or ineffective” is flawed in
many respects.
First and foremost, it is entirely atextual. The majority
cites exactly zero dictionary definitions of the terms “inad-
equate” or “ineffective.” And while it does reference an ear-
lier draft of the legislation that became §2255, ante, at 7
(quoting Hayman, 342 U. S., at 215, n. 23), it fails to men-
tion that Congress specifically rejected language that em-
braced the majority’s “impracticable only” proposition. See
Hayman, 342 U. S., at 215, n. 23; In re Dorsainvil, 119 F.
3d 245, 250 (CA3 1997).
Furthermore, while the majority opinion accurately re-
cites the history and purpose of §2255, see ante, at 5–6, it
ignores the import of that history. As explained above,
when Congress enacted §2255 in 1948, it intended to ensure
equivalence between traditional habeas and the new §2255
mechanism for postconviction review. Supra, at 5. Accord-
ingly, Congress inserted the saving clause to ensure that
certain pre-existing postconviction claims (say, a claim of
statutory innocence) could still be heard even if the statu-
tory language Congress was adopting inadvertently barred
them. Supra, at 3–7. And Congress preserved the language
of §2255(e)—the language that performs the equalizing
function—in 1996, even as it made other significant
changes to §2255. Supra, at 7–8.
Ignoring all this, the majority grounds its analysis of
§2255(e) in a scattershot of lower court cases that the ma-
jority claims “[t]raditionally” viewed the saving clause as
solving only for practical filing problems. Ante, at 6–7. To
be sure, a handful of lower courts applied the saving clause
where the sentencing court was dissolved. Ibid. But lower
courts have also “[t]raditionally,” ante, at 6, treated the sav-
ing clause as permitting individuals with previously una-
vailable statutory innocence claims to file habeas petitions
Cite as: 599 U. S. ____ (2023) 13
JACKSON, J., dissenting
in light of §2255(h)’s successive-petition bar. Prost v. An-
derson, 636 F. 3d 578, 605 (CA10 2011) (Seymour, J., con-
curring in part and dissenting in part).6 The majority also
fails to grapple with this Court’s own opinions that suggest
a broader interpretation of the saving clause is proper. See
Swain v. Pressley, 430 U. S. 372, 381–382 (1977); Sanders,
373 U. S., at 14–15; Hayman, 342 U. S., at 223; Brief for
Respondent 17–18.
It appears the majority’s interpretation of §2255(e) is pri-
marily attributable to its concern that interpreting the sav-
ing clause to permit Jones to file a habeas petition might
authorize an “end-run” around §2255’s procedures. Ante, at
10–11, 14. I think those fears are vastly overblown.
Properly interpreted, a §2255 motion is only “inadequate
or ineffective” when the potential procedural bar does not
provide a prisoner with any meaningful opportunity to pre-
sent a claim. And that circumstance does not exist any time
a procedural limitation in §2255 screens out a claim. For
example, if an individual does not raise his legal innocence
claim in a §2255 motion in a timely fashion, see §2255(f ),
he cannot resort to the saving clause to file a habeas peti-
tion; that individual did have a meaningful opportunity to
raise his claim pursuant to the §2255 process, but missed
the window of opportunity. Similarly, where Congress has
clearly narrowed the scope of postconviction relief—as it
has done for claims of new evidence and new constitutional
rules—it has overridden the equivalence aim that would
otherwise render §2255 inadequate or ineffective, such that
——————
6 See also, e.g., Triestman v. United States, 124 F. 3d 361, 363 (CA2
1997); In re Dorsainvil, 119 F. 3d 245, 250–252 (CA3 1997); In re Jones,
226 F. 3d 328, 333–334 (CA4 2000); Reyes-Requena v. United States, 243
F. 3d 893, 904 (CA5 2011); Hill v. Masters, 836 F. 3d 591, 599–600 (CA6
2016); In re Davenport, 147 F. 3d 605, 610–611 (CA7 1998); Stephens v.
Herrera, 464 F. 3d 895, 898 (CA9 2006); Wofford v. Scott, 177 F. 3d 1236,
1245 (CA11 1999), overruled by McCarthan v. Director of Goodwill In-
dustries-Suncoast Inc., 851 F. 3d 1076 (CA11 2017) (en banc).
14 JONES v. HENDRIX
JACKSON, J., dissenting
the saving clause does not apply. On top of this, given the
congruence purpose underlying §2255(e), an individual can
resort to habeas via §2255(e) only where the particular
claim he seeks to bring would have been cognizable under
pre-AEDPA principles.
Thus, the majority has no good answer to interpreting the
saving clause as doing what Congress crafted it to do—
among other things, ensuring equivalence between §2255
and the prior postconviction remedy being replaced or mod-
ified, unless Congress clearly establishes otherwise. A suc-
cessive statutory innocence claim could have been brought
prior to the 1996 addition of §2255(h), and Congress has not
clearly foreclosed such claims in the text of §2255. There-
fore, the saving clause applies, and Jones should have been
permitted to raise his legal innocence claim by filing a ha-
beas petition under §2241.
II
The foregoing analysis assumes, as the majority does,
that the only hope of a prisoner in Jones’s position is to as-
sert his statutory innocence claim via a habeas petition
filed under §2241 per the saving clause, because §2255(h)
prevents the filing of such a successive §2255 motion. But
I would not be so quick to assume that a successive §2255
motion asserting statutory innocence is impermissible due
to §2255(h). Here is why.
Nothing in the whole of §2255 suggests that Congress
ever considered the scenario presented in this case—one in
which a prisoner who has already filed a postconviction mo-
tion suddenly gets a new claim of legal innocence (after his
first petition was filed) based on a development in Supreme
Court case law. Therefore, it is not at all clear that Con-
gress determined that such an individual is simply out of
luck. Far from making the decision that a prisoner in this
circumstance should not be permitted to raise that newly
Cite as: 599 U. S. ____ (2023) 15
JACKSON, J., dissenting
available claim by filing another §2255 motion—as the ma-
jority maintains—Congress has simply never spoken to
what is supposed to happen with newly available claims of
legal innocence.
To reach today’s conclusion, then, the majority draws a
“negative inference” that Congress intended for §2255’s
“second or successive” bar to preclude successive filings that
contain legal innocence claims. Ante, at 10. But the major-
ity’s inferential reasoning is highly problematic in at least
two respects.
First, negative inferences drawn without proper context
can be notoriously unreliable. And, as detailed below, there
are myriad reasons for skepticism here. Section 2255(h)’s
anti-claim-splitting purpose is one. Another is the likely
reason that legal innocence claims do not appear in the text
of the statute (spoiler alert: they were inadvertently omit-
ted). Background equitable principles and the practical
consequences of preventing the filing of successive petitions
in this circumstance are additional key contextual clues
that the majority seems to have missed.
Second, I am suspicious of the majority’s choice to resort
to inferential reasoning at all, given that this Court has
long held that we will not read a statute to displace access
to “the great writ” unless Congress has been clear about its
intention to accomplish this result. Ex parte Yerger, 8 Wall.
85, 95, 102 (1869). The clear-statement rule is plainly ap-
plicable here, and the majority offers the flimsiest of expla-
nations for its decision to deviate from its application at the
threshold of today’s interpretation.
In short, as shown below, the initial assumption that
Congress necessarily meant for §2255(h) to bar Jones’s suc-
cessive petition asserting statutory innocence is shaky, at
best. I would have held that Jones’s petition can proceed,
even without reliance on the saving clause, because
§2255(h) does not bar it.
16 JONES v. HENDRIX
JACKSON, J., dissenting
A
The majority says that “since [AEDPA], second or succes-
sive §2255 motions are barred unless they rely on” one of
two (and only two) circumstances: “ ‘newly discovered evi-
dence,’ §2255(h)(1), or ‘a new rule of constitutional law,’
§2255(h)(2).” Ante, at 1. Legal innocence claims are barred,
the majority holds, pursuant to this “straightforward nega-
tive inference.” Ante, at 10. But there is a good reason that
the negative-inference canon “must be applied with great
caution.” A. Scalia & B. Garner, Reading Law: The Inter-
pretation of Legal Texts 107 (2012). And the reason is that
“its application depends so much on context.” Ibid. In this
case, for instance, there are several strong contextual clues
that substantially undercut the majority’s purportedly
“straightforward” inferential reasoning.
1
First of all, while the majority interprets §2255(h) as if
Congress designed that provision to impose “finality” with-
out regard to the claims at issue (other than the two listed
situations), see ante, at 12, as it turns out, that is not the
primary purpose of §2255(h). Instead, §2255(h)’s “second or
successive petition” bar was inserted into AEDPA to ensure
that all available claims a prisoner has are brought in a sin-
gle postconviction petition. In circumstances where the
prisoner seeks to assert a claim that was previously una-
vailable (i.e., a claim that could not have been raised be-
fore), Congress permitted successive petitions.
Explaining this fully requires me to make a preliminary
big-picture point. Section 2255 (originally and as amended
by AEDPA) is not a gauntlet of arbitrary hurdles that Con-
gress has erected to stymie prisoners who seek to obtain ju-
dicial review of their detention. Indeed, as explained, when
Congress first enacted §2255, it had no intention of shrink-
ing the catalog of available postconviction claims. Ante, at
Cite as: 599 U. S. ____ (2023) 17
JACKSON, J., dissenting
5–6; see also Part I, supra. To be sure, Congress has under-
taken to restrict the writ’s availability somewhat since
§2255 was first enacted, but it has nevertheless continued
to appreciate the significance of access to postconviction re-
view of the legality of a prisoner’s detention. Hence, even
after AEDPA, Congress permits all incarcerated individu-
als—including those who have been convicted of serious
crimes and who are serving sentences that have been im-
posed by courts of competent jurisdiction—to seek collateral
relief. See §§2254(a), 2255(a).
Still, when it enacted AEDPA in 1996, Congress was
aware of how §2255’s postconviction processes had been op-
erating on the ground since §2255’s enactment. Thus, Con-
gress quite rationally sought to “ ‘balance’ ” the “ ‘individual
interest in justice that arises in the extraordinary case’ ”
with “ ‘the societal interests in finality, comity, and conser-
vation of scarce judicial resources.’ ” McQuiggin v. Perkins,
569 U. S. 383, 393 (2013) (quoting Schlup v. Delo, 513 U. S.
298, 324 (1995)).
Section 2255(h) reflects this balancing. “What emerges
from a review of the debates over the successive petition re-
strictions is a clear sense that” Congress wanted to “pre-
ven[t] manipulation of the system through relitigation of
previously presented claims or strategic withholding of
claims for later presentation,” while still creating “a mech-
anism that would allow prisoners to have one full, fair
chance to present their meritorious . . . claims to the federal
courts.” B. Stevenson, The Politics of Fear and Death: Suc-
cessive Problems in Capital Federal Habeas Corpus Cases,
77 N. Y. U. L. Rev. 699, 772 (2002). As Senator Hatch said
at the time: “We have provided for protection of Federal ha-
beas corpus, but we do it one time and that is it—unless, of
course, they can truly come up with evidence of innocence
that could not have been presented at trial. There we allow
successive petitions.” 141 Cong. Rec. 15042 (1995). Then-
Senator Biden similarly explained that the goal of AEDPA
18 JONES v. HENDRIX
JACKSON, J., dissenting
was “essentially giving one bite out of the apple to drasti-
cally reduce the ability to have successive petitions unless
there is some egregious action that is learned about after
the petition is filed, the first petition.” Id., at 15027.7
Thus, Congress enacted §2255(h) to prevent prisoners
from engaging in manipulative filing practices—such as
claim splitting, i.e., the inefficient business of prisoners
with time on their hands doling out their existing postcon-
viction claims in a series of successive motions filed in court
seriatim. See Sanders, 373 U. S., at 18 (noting that a pris-
oner may “deliberately withhol[d]” or “deliberately
abando[n]” claims in a first postconviction petition “in the
hope of being granted two hearings rather than one”).8 And,
tellingly, because Congress was focused on that problem—
not attempting to impose “finality” writ large—it did not
bar all successive petitions; to the contrary, it proceeded to
identify particular circumstances in which another collat-
eral challenge would be authorized. §§2255(h)(1)–(2).
Additional doubts about the majority’s negative inference
surface when one recognizes that the two circumstances
Congress carved out of the successive-petition bar share an
important common thread: Both situations relate to the
newness of the claim that the prisoner seeks to assert in a
successive petition. That is, both prongs of §2255(h) that
authorize a successive petition do so where a petitioner
——————
7 See also H. R. Rep. No. 101–681, pt. 1, p. 111 (1990) (explaining that
the purpose of a predecessor bill was “to promote finality” but also “to
ensure that habeas corpus petitioners have one fair opportunity to pre-
sent their Federal claims to the Federal courts”).
8 It appears that, in enacting restrictions on successive petitions, Con-
gress was primarily worried about successive petitions filed by state pris-
oners on death row, because a petition could delay the execution of a
death sentence. See Stevenson, 77 N. Y. U. L. Rev., at 723–730. Indeed,
the law is called the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act. That
concern does not apply to a situation like Jones’s, since he is not serving
a death sentence, and nothing about a successive petition delays the ex-
ecution of his sentence of imprisonment.
Cite as: 599 U. S. ____ (2023) 19
JACKSON, J., dissenting
brings a claim that arose after the time in which the pris-
oner would or could have filed his first petition. Ibid. (au-
thorizing successive petitions raising “newly discovered ev-
idence” or “a new rule of constitutional law” (emphasis
added)).
In light of this key observation, the majority’s assumption
that §2255(h) bars Jones’s claim is significantly hobbled.
Jones’s statutory innocence claim is also “new”—in the
sense that it was not available to him when his first §2255
petition was filed.9 And Jones’s claim shares other features
of the circumstances that Congress exempted from the “sec-
ond or successive” general prohibition as well—including
that it implicates innocence, see §2255(h)(1), and stems
from a retroactively applicable Supreme Court opinion, see
§2255(h)(2). Nor does the filing of Jones’s successive peti-
tion implicate any anti-claim-splitting rationale, as Jones
did not manipulatively withhold his legal innocence claim
during his initial §2255 proceedings. Indeed, he could not
possibly have done so, since this Court did not decide Rehaif
v. United States, 588 U. S. ___ (2019), which provided the
basis for his claim, until nearly two decades after Jones
filed his first petition.
In short, it is hard to believe that a Congress that ex-
pressly authorized “new” claims involving innocence or
those that arise from developments in Supreme Court case
——————
9 Prior to this Court’s holding in Rehaif v. United States, 588 U. S. ___(2019), well-established Circuit precedent had barred Jones’s claim.
United States v. Jones, 266 F. 3d 804, 810, n. 5 (CA8 2001) (citing United
States v. Kind, 194 F. 3d 900, 906 (CA8 1999)). After Jones’s conviction
became final, this Court decided Rehaif, which interpreted the elements
of Jones’s crime of conviction more narrowly than some Courts of Appeals
had, and thereby recognized a potential basis for Jones and other similar
defendants to claim legal innocence. And because Rehaif was a Supreme
Court ruling that changed the scope of a criminal statute, it applied ret-
roactively to individuals (like Jones) whose convictions had become final
at the time it was issued. Schriro v. Summerlin, 542 U. S. 348, 351–352
(2004); Bousley v. United States, 523 U. S. 614, 620–621 (1998).
20 JONES v. HENDRIX
JACKSON, J., dissenting
law despite §2255(h)’s successive-petition bar also meant
for §2255(h) to preclude Jones from bringing the claim that
he seeks to file here.
2
The majority’s negative inference also rests on the bald
assumption that Congress intentionally left statutory inno-
cence out of its list of carveouts, because it wanted those
claims to be barred if brought in a successive petition. Ante,
at 12 (asserting that “Congress has chosen finality over er-
ror correction” with respect to statutory innocence claims
brought in successive petitions (emphasis added)). But
there is a perfectly logical alternative explanation for why
statutory innocence claims do not appear as express exclu-
sions in the text of §2255(h), an explanation that is based
on another important contextual reference point: the enact-
ment history of the statute.
Section 2255(h) was enacted in the same Public Law as
§2244(b), a provision that contains analogous second-or-
successive petition limitations for state prisoners. Indeed,
Congress “appears to have modeled §2255(h)(2)” on those
state-prisoner provisions. Chazen v. Marske, 938 F. 3d 851,
863 (CA7 2019) (Barrett, J., concurring) (citing R. Fallon, J.
Manning, D. Meltzer, & D. Shapiro, Hart and Wechsler’s
The Federal Courts and the Federal System 1362 (7th ed.
2015) (Hart & Wechsler)). Like §2255(h), §2244(b)—the
model provision—does not address statutory innocence
claims in any fashion. But that is simply because there is
no such thing as a statutory innocence claim in the realm
of federal collateral relief for state prisoners. See Hart &
Wechsler 1362; see also Estelle v. McGuire, 502 U. S. 62, 67
(1991) (“[F]ederal habeas corpus relief does not lie for errors
of state law” (internal quotation marks omitted)).
Thus, as others have observed, when Congress crafted
§2255(h) based on the state-prisoner model in §2244(b), it
Cite as: 599 U. S. ____ (2023) 21
JACKSON, J., dissenting
seems to have “ ‘lost sight of the fact that’ ” federally incar-
cerated individuals “ ‘can raise federal statutory claims in
their collateral attacks.’ ” Chazen, 938 F. 3d, at 863 (quot-
ing Hart & Wechsler 1362; emphasis added); Chazen, 938
F. 3d, at 863 (suggesting that the omission of legal inno-
cence claims from §2255(h) was due to “congressional over-
sight”); Reply Brief for Respondent 15.
To me, this contextual revelation rocks the foundation of
the majority’s negative inference. That is, it is plausible
(and perhaps even likely) that Congress did not appreciate
fully that the modeled-after language establishing a succes-
sive-petition bar did not capture the full scope of available
claims for federal prisoners.10 And, of course, if Congress
simply overlooked statutory innocence claims when it
crafted §2255(h), then the omitted language that the major-
ity puts so much stock in is not actually indicative of Con-
gress having “chosen finality” with respect to statutory in-
nocence claims. Ante, at 12. Instead, the absence of any
textual reference to statutory innocence would be wholly
unremarkable.
3
Given the purpose and history of §2255(h) as I have just
described them, I find quite compelling the Government’s
observation that “[n]othing in AEDPA [actually] justifies an
——————
10 The rushed and emotionally charged manner in which AEDPA came
into fruition makes Congress’s lack of attention to this detail a very re-
alistic possibility. AEDPA was passed in reaction to the Oklahoma City
bombing, and President Clinton had “demand[ed]” its passage by the 1-
year anniversary of that event. J. Liebman, An “Effective Death Pen-
alty”? AEDPA and Error Detection in Capital Cases, 67 Brooklyn L. Rev.
411, 413 (2011); see also Stevenson, 77 N. Y. U. L. Rev., at 701. Both this
Court and commentators have observed that, likely as a result, AEDPA
is “shoddily crafted and poorly cohered.” L. Kovarsky, Death Ineligibility
and Habeas Corpus, 95 Cornell L. Rev. 329, 342 (2010); see also Lindh v.
Murphy, 521 U. S. 320, 336 (1997) (“[I]n a world of silk purses and pigs’
ears, [AEDPA] is not a silk purse of the art of statutory drafting”).
22 JONES v. HENDRIX
JACKSON, J., dissenting
inference that Congress silently repealed the traditional
[postconviction] remedy for federal prisoners who have
been imprisoned for conduct that Congress did not crimi-
nalize.” Brief for Respondent 28. I proceed here to add that
nothing outside of AEDPA—not the background legal prin-
ciples that existed at the time Congress enacted the statute,
nor the practical consequences of reading §2255(h) in this
manner—supports that inference either.
Take equity, for instance. When Congress crafted
§2255(h), it legislated against an important background eq-
uitable principle pertaining to postconviction relief: Courts
should not interpret statutory provisions governing habeas
review to even “ ‘run the risk’ ” of causing prisoners to “ ‘for-
ever los[e] their opportunity for any federal review of their
. . . claims.’ ” Panetti v. Quarterman, 551 U. S. 930, 945–
946 (2007) (quoting Rhines v. Weber, 544 U. S. 269, 275
(2005)); see also Stewart v. Martinez-Villareal, 523 U. S.
637, 645 (1998). This means that Congress was well aware
that courts consistently “rel[y] on equitable doctrines to
carve out . . . ways petitioners can bypass [otherwise appli-
cable] procedural obstacles” when a prisoner has “not had a
full and fair opportunity to litigate their federal claims.” E.
Primus, Equitable Gateways: Toward Expanded Federal
Habeas Corpus Review of State-Court Criminal Convic-
tions, 61 Ariz. L. Rev. 291, 305 (2019).11 Knowing that
courts are equitable tribunals that tend to operate in this
fashion should have prompted Congress to express its in-
——————
11 Many of the Courts of Appeals that had read §2255(e) as saving legal
innocence claims invoked this equitable principle. See, e.g., In re Daven-
port, 147 F. 3d, at 609; Triestman, 124 F. 3d, at 378; In re Dorsainvil, 119
F. 3d, at 251. As lower courts also recognized, the impetus to provide a
meaningful opportunity for review of a postconviction claim was espe-
cially strong when failure to hear the claim might result in a “miscar-
riage of justice.” See Reyes-Requena, 243 F. 3d, at 904; In re Dorsainvil,
119 F. 3d, at 251.
Cite as: 599 U. S. ____ (2023) 23
JACKSON, J., dissenting
tention to override that value (assuming that it actually in-
tended to completely foreclose new legal innocence claims).
Congress did not do so; yet the majority reads its silence to
accomplish that same extraordinarily inequitable result.12
The practical consequences that inure from the majority’s
reading also undercut substantially the negative inference
upon which the majority relies. We have consistently
warned that courts should “resis[t] an interpretation of
[AEDPA] that would ‘produce troublesome results’ [and]
‘create procedural anomalies.’ ” Panetti, 551 U. S., at 946(quoting Castro v. United States, 540 U. S. 375, 380 (2003)).
The majority does not speak to this at all, but its interpre-
tation of §2255 produces bizarre outcomes.
First, there is the quirky procedural anomaly that arises
due to the fact that statutory innocence claims are fully au-
thorized in the postconviction review context. This Court’s
recognition that a statute covers a narrower scope of crimi-
nal conduct than was previously acknowledged falls within
the narrow subset of criminal law decisions that are fully
retroactive, meaning that a federal prisoner can rely upon
that new determination whether his case is still on direct
review or not. Schriro v. Summerlin, 542 U. S. 348, 351–
352 (2004); Bousley, 523 U. S., at 620–621. But reading
§2255(h) to bar a successive petition raising legal innocence
would mean that most prisoners who would (remarkably)
be eligible for such retroactive relief would turn out to have
no mechanism for actually requesting it. A strange practi-
cal conundrum, to say the least.
Inferring that §2255(h) bars legal innocence claims when
brought in a successive petition also produces stunningly
disparate results that bear no relationship to Congress’s
——————
12 Theoretically, Jones had “an” opportunity to raise his claim. But, in
my view, it was not a meaningful one. Well-established Circuit prece-
dent barred the claim at the time of Jones’s direct appeal and first peti-
tion. See n. 9, supra. Jones has never had any opportunity, meaningful
or otherwise, to rely on Rehaif’s authoritative construction.
24 JONES v. HENDRIX
JACKSON, J., dissenting
purported finality goals. Consider two individuals who
have been convicted of the same federal crime—perhaps
two codefendants who were tried and sentenced together.
Both complete their direct appeals, but only one files a
§2255 motion within AEDPA’s statute of limitations, while
the other one decides not to or misses the deadline. If
§2255(h) bars a successive petition raising a legal innocence
claim, then when Rehaif is handed down—altering the ele-
ments of the crime of conviction such that both prisoners
have a colorable claim of legal innocence—only the one who
did not previously file a §2255 petition can raise this retro-
active statutory innocence claim.
Reference to Congress’s interest in “finality” cannot ex-
plain this odd unequal treatment. Under the Court’s inter-
pretation, a prisoner whose conviction became final 30
years ago can assert a Rehaif claim if he never previously
filed a §2255 motion, whereas someone whose conviction be-
came final 2 years ago cannot if he has already had a §2255
petition adjudicated.13
Interpreting §2255(h) as completely foreclosing succes-
sive petitions bringing statutory innocence claims also
places prisoners in an untenable catch-22 that cannot be
what any rational Congress actually intended. Consider
what has happened in this very case. Per AEDPA’s statute
of limitations, Jones had to file his first §2255 petition
within one year of his conviction becoming final. §2255(f ).
He did so, and that petition was successful; the Eighth Cir-
cuit found that Jones had received ineffective assistance of
counsel. United States v. Jones, 403 F. 3d 604, 605 (2005).
In the majority’s view, by seeking to vindicate his Sixth
Amendment rights in this way, Jones has forfeited, forever
——————
13 Accommodating the possibility of retroactively applicable Supreme
Court opinions, §2255 runs the statute of limitations not just from the
date on which the conviction became final, but also from the date a new,
retroactively applicable right was recognized by the Supreme Court.
§2255(f )(3).
Cite as: 599 U. S. ____ (2023) 25
JACKSON, J., dissenting
and for all time, his right to rely on any new retroactive Su-
preme Court opinion that suggests he is incarcerated for
noncriminal behavior. There is no indication that Congress
meant for Jones and other prisoners in his position to have
to choose between pursing an ineffective-assistance-of-
counsel claim and a claim of legal innocence.
* * *
Despite all this, the majority clings to its “straightfor-
ward” negative inference and interprets §2255(h) as a bar
to a court’s consideration of Jones’s legal innocence claim.
My point is that, with so many contextual indicators that
Congress did not really mean for §2255(h) to be read to pre-
clude new claims of statutory innocence, the Court should
have simply determined that Jones’s petition, which asserts
such a claim, was not plainly barred by §2255(h), and could
thus proceed in a successive §2255 petition.
B
Instead of drawing an inference about the operation of
§2255(h), the most “straightforward” way of determining
whether Jones’s legal innocence claim is precluded by stat-
ute, ante, at 12, would have been to apply our clear-state-
ment rule to today’s interpretation.
1
A “longstanding rule” of this Court, INS v. St. Cyr, 533
U. S. 289, 298 (2001), the clear-statement rule directs that,
before interpreting a congressional enactment as “ ‘clos[ing
the Court’s] doors to a class of habeas petitioners,’ ” the
Court must search for a “ ‘clear indication that such was
Congress’ intent,’ ” Panetti, 551 U. S., at 946 (quoting Cas-
tro, 540 U. S., at 381). This principle recognizes that Con-
gress must “speak unambiguously when it seeks to effect a
result that, although constitutional, would undermine a
constitutionally derived value.” J. Manning, Textualism
and the Equity of the Statute, 101 Colum. L. Rev. 1, 121–
26 JONES v. HENDRIX
JACKSON, J., dissenting
122 (2001) (Manning). And, before today, this Court has
repeatedly recognized the importance of the clear-state-
ment rule with respect to any analysis of an Act of Congress
that potentially restricts access to the writ of habeas corpus
or its statutory equivalent.14 In fact, “where a provision
precluding review is claimed to bar habeas review,” we have
“required a particularly clear statement.” Demore v. Kim,
538 U. S. 510, 517 (2003) (emphasis added).
The clear-statement rule is plainly implicated here. Un-
der the state of the law at the time AEDPA was enacted,
prisoners were entitled to bring a petition to assert a new
claim of legal innocence, even a second or successive peti-
tion. Supra, at 8–9. Congress could change that state of
affairs, but, under the clear-statement rule, if it intended to
do so, it needed to speak clearly to effectuate that result.
At a more general level of analysis, the clear-statement
rule also applies to these circumstances because the inter-
pretive question in this case touches upon the venerated
writ of habeas corpus—the only writ that is expressly men-
tioned in the Constitution. Art. I, §9, cl. 2; Holland, 560
U. S., at 649. We have long recognized that the clear-state-
ment rule serves the core liberty interests protected by the
writ of habeas corpus. See Ex parte Yerger, 8 Wall., at 103(holding, more than 150 years ago, that the Court had ju-
risdiction over a particular habeas petition and relying on
the clear-statement rule to reach that conclusion, explain-
ing that, to conclude otherwise, would “greatly weaken the
efficacy of the writ” and “deprive the citizen in many cases
of its benefits”). Likewise, in modern times, we have been
especially careful to reference clear-statement principles,
——————
14 See, e.g., Boumediene v. Bush, 553 U. S. 723, 738 (2008); McQuiggin
v. Perkins, 569 U. S. 383, 397 (2013); Holland v. Florida, 560 U. S. 631,
646 (2010); Panetti v. Quarterman, 551 U. S. 930, 946 (2007); Hamdan
v. Rumsfeld, 548 U. S. 557, 575 (2006); Demore v. Kim, 538 U. S. 510, 517
(2003); Castro v. United States, 540 U. S. 375, 381 (2003); INS v. St. Cyr,
533 U. S. 289, 298 (2001); Ex parte Yerger, 8 Wall. 85, 102 (1869).
Cite as: 599 U. S. ____ (2023) 27
JACKSON, J., dissenting
and thereby eschew statutory interpretations that would
(perhaps unintentionally) foreclose judicial review of post-
conviction claims, even where the text of the statute might
(sometimes even strongly) suggest otherwise.15
Furthermore, and significantly for present purposes, we
have already determined that the necessary “clear state-
ment” here—i.e., the signal from Congress that justifies
reading a statute as foreclosing access to venerated post-
conviction review processes—cannot be derived from nega-
tive inferences drawn from statutory text. In Ex parte
Yerger, for instance, we declared that interpreting a statute
to “[r]epea[l] by implication” habeas jurisdiction is “not fa-
vored.” 8 Wall., at 105. More recently, we warned (again)
that “[i]mplications from statutory text or legislative his-
tory are not sufficient to repeal habeas jurisdiction; instead,
Congress must articulate specific and unambiguous statu-
tory directives to effect a repeal.” St. Cyr, 533 U. S., at 299
(citing Ex parte Yerger, 8 Wall., at 105). And, again, in Hol-
land, this Court explained that the clear-statement rule
——————
15 For example, we cited the clear-statement rule when declining to
read §2244(b)(2), which generally prohibits second or successive habeas
petitions filed by state prisoners, as blocking a second-in-time habeas
petition that raised an incompetent-to-be-executed claim, even though,
literally read, the statute could have done so. Panetti, 551 U. S., at 942–
943, 945–946. Similarly, in Holland, the Court relied on the clear-state-
ment rule when evaluating AEDPA’s 1-year statute of limitations, hold-
ing that the unequivocal statutory limitations period can be equitably
tolled, even though the text of AEDPA did not include equitable tolling
among the enumerated exceptions. 560 U. S., at 646–649. Likewise, in
Castro, the Court used the clear-statement rule to reject the argument
that §2244(b)(3)(E)—which prohibits habeas petitioners from seeking
certiorari review of a “ ‘grant or denial of an authorization by a court of
appeals to file a second or successive application’ ”—prevented this Court
from reviewing whether the lower courts had mistakenly concluded that
the federal prisoner’s petition was in fact a “second or successive” peti-
tion. 540 U. S., at 379–381. Finally, in St. Cyr, the Court utilized the
clear-statement rule to dispense with the contention that AEDPA
stripped federal courts of jurisdiction to review a noncitizen’s habeas pe-
tition raising a pure question of law. 533 U. S., at 298–299, 314.
28 JONES v. HENDRIX
JACKSON, J., dissenting
generally prohibits a court from inferring that the “in-
clu[sion of] one item . . . is to exclude other similar items”
in order to read a statute as forbidding review of a postcon-
viction claim. 560 U. S., at 648; see also id., at 649 (“coun-
sel[ing] hesitancy before interpreting AEDPA’s statutory si-
lence as indicating a congressional intent to close
courthouse doors”). Yet, here, as the majority appears to
admit, the only way to read §2255(h) as barring Jones’s
statutory innocence claim is to infer that such preclusion is
what Congress intended. Ante, at 10, 23.
This case would have been easily resolved if we had ap-
plied the clear-statement rule at the outset, as we have al-
ways done in cases of this nature. Doing so would have ap-
propriately eliminated a reading of §2255(h) that forecloses
access to habeas relief by negative implication. Use of the
rule would have thus protected core constitutional norms
by “ensur[ing] Congress does not, by broad or general lan-
guage, legislate on a sensitive topic inadvertently or with-
out due deliberation.” Spector v. Norwegian Cruise Line
Ltd., 545 U. S. 119, 139 (2005) (opinion of Kennedy, J.); see
also Will v. Michigan Dept. of State Police, 491 U. S. 58, 65
(1989).
2
In the last few pages of its opinion, the Court makes the
unceremonious (but still startling) announcement that the
clear-statement rule is inapplicable to today’s analysis of
§2255(h). Ante, at 23–25.16 Try as it might, in my view, the
majority has failed to provide a single persuasive reason for
this dramatic break.
First, the majority suggests that the clear-statement rule
is not appropriate when interpreting provisions related to
——————
16 It appears that no one but the Court’s majority even thought it pos-
sible to sidestep the clear-statement rule with respect to today’s inter-
pretive exercise. Both Jones and the Government expressly invoked it.
And Court-appointed amicus did not dispute its applicability.
Cite as: 599 U. S. ____ (2023) 29
JACKSON, J., dissenting
“finality”—and seems to draw a line between AEDPA’s stat-
ute of limitations, which does get clear-statement treat-
ment, and its provisions governing successive petitions.
Ante, at 23–24. This is nonsense. Both AEDPA provisions
use similar language. §2255(f ) (“A 1-year period of limita-
tion shall apply to a motion under this section”); §2255(h)
(“A second or successive motion must . . . contain . . . ”). And
both procedural limitations relate to Congress’s interest in
finality. Ante, at 24; Wood v. Milyard, 566 U. S. 463, 472
(2012) (noting that AEDPA’s statute of limitations “lends
finality to . . . court judgments within a reasonable time”
(emphasis added; internal quotation marks omitted)).17
Next, the majority conspicuously downplays the stakes in
this case. Not once does its opinion make direct mention of
the fact that the claim the majority says §2255(h) silently
precludes is one that implicates core values because it in-
volves legal innocence. Instead, the majority repeatedly de-
scribes Jones’s bid for access to the postconviction review
process as bringing a mere “statutory” claim. Ante, at 2, 12,
21, 23.18 But statutory claims that suggest a person’s inno-
cence are different in kind from more run-of-the-mill statu-
tory claims, such as a technical, nonprejudicial violation of
a criminal procedure rule. See United States v. Addonizio,
——————
17 This Court has also treated these two provisions as similarly suscep-
tible to equitable exceptions; for instance, the “miscarriage of justice”
principle that permits bypassing procedural barriers applies to both.
McQuiggin, 569 U. S., at 386, 392–393; Schlup, 513 U. S., at 320.
18 The euphemistic manner in which the Court’s opinion tiptoes around
what Jones is actually arguing is noteworthy. The majority says that,
by operation of §2255(h), prisoners in Jones’s position cannot take ad-
vantage of “a more favorable interpretation of statutory law,” ante, at 1,
which it also obliquely characterizes as “an intervening change in statu-
tory interpretation,” ante, at 3, or “a newly adopted narrowing interpre-
tation of a criminal statute,” ante, at 9. In fact, the word “innocence” only
appears in the Court’s opinion when recounting the Government’s argu-
ments. Ante, at 21, 23. If the majority has spared a thought for the
appropriate standard when a petitioner is claiming legal innocence, I
could not find it in the Court’s opinion.
30 JONES v. HENDRIX
JACKSON, J., dissenting
442 U. S. 178, 186–187 (1979); Davis, 417 U. S., at 346–347
(citing Hill v. United States, 368 U. S. 424, 428–429 (1962)).
In any event, the majority does not cite a single case that
suggests that an Act of Congress that threatens to cut off
access to habeas (or its statutory equivalent) should be
treated any differently for purposes of application of the
clear-statement rule if a petitioner’s claim has a statutory
basis.
The majority’s most full-throated defense of its jettison-
ing of clear-statement principles lies in its attempt to cast
statutory innocence claims as not “historically or constitu-
tionally grounded.” Ante, at 24–25. The first and most ob-
vious problem with this effort is that the historical pedigree
of a claim is irrelevant for clear-statement purposes. The
clear-statement rule is applicable here because the statute
being interpreted involves access to the writ of habeas cor-
pus—a significant constitutional value that we would not
assume Congress would discard without careful considera-
tion. See Manning 121–122; see also Holland, 560 U. S., at646–649. And, so triggered, our clear-statement canon of
construction is not rendered inapplicable just because the
particular type of claim that a prisoner seeks to advance in
the context of a habeas or postconviction proceeding (if he
is afforded one) might not date back to the founding era.
This must be why the majority cites no precedent that
splices the clear-statement rule in this fashion.
Looking back to the time of the founding to determine
whether the clear-statement rule applies to our interpreta-
tion of a statute passed in 1996 also makes no sense. The
clear-statement question relates to what Congress intended
with respect to the meaning of the statute at the time it was
enacted. When Congress introduced §2255(h), it codified or
changed the law that existed at that time (i.e., in 1996).
See, e.g., Slack v. McDaniel, 529 U. S. 473, 483 (2000) (not-
ing that AEDPA’s certificate-of-appealability provisions
codified the prevailing judicial standard). Thus, when this
Cite as: 599 U. S. ____ (2023) 31
JACKSON, J., dissenting
Court has previously applied the clear-statement rule and
analyzed the meaning of particular AEDPA provisions, the
feelings of the Framers were of no moment. Instead, we
properly examined the law leading up to AEDPA’s enact-
ment, not founding-era sources. See, e.g., Panetti, 551 U. S.,
at 944; Magwood v. Patterson, 561 U. S. 320, 337 (2010)
(plurality opinion).
Even if the majority was right with respect to its assump-
tion that founding-era practices bear on whether the clear-
statement rule applies here, historical practice plainly un-
dermines its assertion that legal innocence claims are of re-
cent vintage. Supreme Court Justices riding circuit in the
early 19th century repeatedly considered the merits of ha-
beas petitions filed by individuals who argued they were be-
ing wrongfully incarcerated because the laws that had been
invoked to justify their confinement, properly construed,
did not reach their conduct.19 Moreover, and importantly,
——————
19 Ex parte D’Olivera, 7 F. Cas. 853, 854 (No. 3,967) (CC Mass. 1813)
(Story, J.) (construing a 1790 statute criminalizing desertion from a mer-
chant ship by “seamen engaged in the merchants’ service of the United
States” as not covering certain “foreign seamen in foreign vessels” and
granting habeas relief to such persons); United States v. Bainbridge, 24
F. Cas. 946, 951–952 (No. 14,497) (CC Mass. 1816) (Story, J.) (consider-
ing on the merits, but ultimately rejecting, a habeas petitioner’s argu-
ment that an enlistment law did not apply to minors enlisted without
parental consent); Ex parte Randolph, 20 F. Cas. 242, 254–257 (No.
11,558) (CC Va. 1833) (Marshall, C. J.) (granting habeas relief to an in-
dividual civilly imprisoned because the statute at issue, properly inter-
preted, did not apply to the petitioner); see also, e.g., Grant v. United
States, 58 F. 694, 695–697 (CA9 1893) (granting writ of error to individ-
uals who had been convicted following a trial, on the ground that the law
at issue, “fairly interpreted,” did not reach the petitioners’ conduct be-
cause “the case does not come within the letter of the statute,” and citing
cases reaching the same conclusion); In re Wahll, 42 F. 822, 825–826
(Minn. 1890) (considering, but rejecting on the merits, a convicted pris-
oner’s claim that his acts did not amount to a violation of a federal law
criminalizing the mailing of obscene letters).
The majority has plainly expended a considerable amount of effort to
32 JONES v. HENDRIX
JACKSON, J., dissenting
since the mid-19th century, the statutory scheme for post-
conviction review has permitted petitions based not only on
a “violation of the constitution” but also on a “violation of
the . . . law of the United States.” Judiciary Act of Feb. 5,
1867, ch. 28, §1, 14 Stat. 385; see also §2255; W. Church,
Writ of Habeas Corpus §169, p. 249 (2d ed. 1893) (“The is-
sue raised on the hearing of a habeas corpus may be one of
law simply”).20
To the extent the majority’s assessment of the purport-
edly nascent nature of statutory innocence claims rests on
its view that, at the time of the founding, habeas relief was
rarely available when a petition was brought by a convicted
individual (as opposed to a pretrial detainee), ante, at 15–
19, there are two additional problems. For one thing, even
assuming that a detainee-versus-convict scope-of-habeas
distinction existed at the dawn of our Nation, Congress has
——————
distinguish all of these cases. See ante, at 18–19, and n. 8. Still, its vig-
orous attempt falls short. For example, the majority tries to distinguish
Wahll on the ground that the court “considered but rejected a similar
argument for ordering pretrial release.” Ante, at 19, n. 8. But it ignores
that the Wahll court still considered the merits of the statutory argu-
ment; the court did not dismiss the case on the ground that such statu-
tory arguments were not cognizable after the prisoner’s conviction. 42
F., at 825–826.
20 This argument that statutory claims are not cognizable in the post-
conviction or habeas context has already been considered—and re-
jected—by this Court. For example, in St. Cyr, this Court cited various
17th- and 18th-century cases to conclude that the “issuance of the writ”
of habeas corpus “encompassed detentions based on errors of law, includ-
ing the erroneous application or interpretation of statutes.” 533 U. S., at
302. And, in Boumediene, the Court reiterated that it is “uncontroversial
. . . that the privilege of habeas corpus entitles the prisoner to a mean-
ingful opportunity to demonstrate that he is being held pursuant to ‘the
erroneous application or interpretation’ of relevant law.” 553 U. S., at
779 (quoting St. Cyr, 533 U. S., at 302; emphasis added). Not once does
the majority engage with the propositions stated in these cases. Nor does
the majority grapple with the express statutory language in both the Ju-
diciary Act of 1867 and §2255 authorizing claims premised on violations
of the “ ‘law of the United States.’ ” Supra, at 32.
Cite as: 599 U. S. ____ (2023) 33
JACKSON, J., dissenting
now squarely rejected it.21 However grounded in history
and tradition the Court’s own view of the scope of habeas
might be, it is obviously not shared by the Legislature that
enacted the statute we are now interpreting.
Second, here again, the majority evaluates the historical
pedigree of legal innocence claims based on faulty history.
It maintains that, historically, a court could review a ha-
beas petition filed by a convicted individual only for “juris-
dictional” errors (which the majority defines narrowly).
Ante, at 15–18, 24–25; cf. Edwards v. Vannoy, 593 U. S. ___,
___–___ (2021) (GORSUCH, J., concurring) (slip op., at 2–8).
But those who have researched this contention have called
it “narrative and myth but not history.” L. Kovarsky, Ha-
beas Myths, Past and Present, 101 Texas L. Rev. Online 57,
79 (2022) (Kovarsky); see also J. Siegel, Habeas, History,
and Hermeneutics, 64 Ariz. L. Rev. 505, 524–532 (2022)
(Siegel); Brown v. Davenport, 596 U. S. ___, ___–___ (2022)
(KAGAN, J., dissenting) (slip op., at 2–8).22
——————
21 Section 2255 explicitly authorizes a convicted prisoner to “move the
court which imposed the sentence” for the prescribed relief, and it allows
petitions to be filed after “the date on which the judgment of conviction
becomes final.” §§2255(a), (f )(1). Also, the major procedural change ac-
complished by Congress’s adoption of §2255 in 1948 was to transfer the
filing of postconviction petitions from the district of confinement to the
sentencing court, see United States v. Hayman, 342 U. S. 205, 215–216
(1952)—a shift that only makes sense if Congress contemplated postcon-
viction challenges.
22 The majority relies heavily on Ex parte Watkins, 3 Pet. 193 (1830),
to support its purported “jurisdictional” line. Ante, at 15–18. But Wat-
kins does not stand for the broad proposition that the majority derives.
Watkins “itself relies on contested habeas history,” and is (as scholars
have explained) distinguishable. Kovarsky 70–71. That Watkins cannot
mean what the majority says is confirmed by the numerous “19th and
early 20th century cases . . . that undeniably decided the merits of con-
stitutional claims that were not premised on the detaining authority’s
lack of jurisdiction or application of an unconstitutional statute or sen-
tence.” Hertz & Liebman §2.4[c], at 44.
34 JONES v. HENDRIX
JACKSON, J., dissenting
At the very least, this take on early habeas practice ap-
pears contradicted by United States v. Bainbridge, 24 F.
Cas. 946 (No. 14,497) (CC Mass. 1816) (Story, J.). There,
Justice Story considered a statutory innocence claim on the
merits even though the individual had already pleaded
guilty. Id., at 949, 951–952. And the postconviction/pre-
conviction distinction also runs headlong into other prece-
dents that have looked back on history and do not subscribe
to such a narrow view. St. Cyr, 533 U. S., at 302 (“[T]he
issuance of the writ was not limited to challenges to the ju-
risdiction of the custodian”); Fay v. Noia, 372 U. S. 391, 404
(1963) (“Nor is it true that at common law habeas corpus
was available only to inquire into the jurisdiction, in a nar-
row sense, of the committing court” (citing Bushell’s Case,
Vaughn. 135, 124 Eng. Rep. 1006 (C. P. 1670))).
Thus, assuming, arguendo, that the historical grounding
of the particular type of claim Jones sought to bring even
matters, the majority is mistaken when it contends that a
statutory innocence claim (including one brought in a suc-
cessive petition) is not sufficiently historical to warrant ap-
plication of our clear-statement rule.
* * *
If the majority had applied the clear-statement rule, as it
should have, to determine whether §2255(h) precludes suc-
cessive postconviction petitions that assert statutory inno-
cence claims, today’s interpretive task would have merely
involved answering one simple question: Is there an unam-
biguous sign in the text of §2255 that Congress meant for
§2255(h) to strip an incarcerated individual of any oppor-
tunity to raise a new claim of legal innocence in a motion
brought in federal court? No such sign exists.23 Therefore,
——————
23 The majority does not appear to dispute this conclusion, as it only
engages with the clear-statement rule to categorically reject its applica-
bility. Ante, at 23–25. The majority does not—and cannot—establish
that, if applied here, the clear-statement rule is satisfied.
Cite as: 599 U. S. ____ (2023) 35
JACKSON, J., dissenting
we could have (and should have) easily concluded that there
is no statutory impediment to Jones’s §2255 motion being
entertained by a court.
III
Finally, I believe that the canon of constitutional avoid-
ance also does important work to guide—and constrain—
the Court’s interpretation of §2255 in this case. See
Zadvydas v. Davis, 533 U. S. 678, 689 (2001); cf. Pressley,
430 U. S., at 381–382 (relying on the saving clause to con-
clude that the District of Columbia’s postconviction statute,
which mirrored §2255, was constitutional). The majority’s
bottom line, reading “the interplay” between §2255(h) and
§2255(e), ante, at 1, is that a person in prison for noncrimi-
nal conduct cannot ask a federal court to review the legality
of his detention if he has previously filed a §2255 petition.
This position is stunning in a country where liberty is a con-
stitutional guarantee and the courts are supposed to be dis-
pensing justice. It also raises hackles under at least two
provisions of our founding charter.
First, the Eighth Amendment. There is a nonfrivolous
argument that the Constitution’s protection against “cruel
and unusual punishment” prohibits the incarceration of in-
nocent individuals. See In re Davis, 557 U. S. 952, 953
(2009) (Stevens, J., concurring) (citing Triestman v. United
States, 124 F. 3d 361, 377–380 (CA2 1997)); see also Herrera
v. Collins, 506 U. S. 390, 432, n. 2 (1993) (Blackmun, J., dis-
senting) (“It . . . may violate the Eighth Amendment to im-
prison someone who is actually innocent”); Robinson v. Cal-
ifornia, 370 U. S. 660, 667 (1962). This is not to say that
the Eighth Amendment creates a “freestanding entitlement
to a second or successive round of postconviction review.”
Ante, at 20. But here Jones seeks a single meaningful op-
portunity to have a federal court consider his claim of legal
innocence.
36 JONES v. HENDRIX
JACKSON, J., dissenting
The majority’s interpretation also implicates the Suspen-
sion Clause. Art. I, §9, cl. 2. The majority admits that, at
a minimum, the Suspension Clause protects the right of ha-
beas corpus as it existed at the time of the founding.24 See
ante, at 15. The majority also seems to acknowledge that,
in the late 18th century, an individual—even one who had
been convicted of a crime—could invoke habeas to raise a
“jurisdictional” error. Ante, at 15, 24–25. Historically, the
term “ ‘jurisdictional’ ” when used by habeas courts “meant
something much broader then than it means now.” Ko-
varsky 75; see also Siegel 524. And, importantly, a court
lacked “jurisdiction”—and thus the writ could issue—when
a person was incarcerated for noncriminal behavior.25
——————
24 I reject the majority’s suggestion that the Suspension Clause pro-
tects only the scope of the great writ as it existed in the founding era.
Historical habeas practice provides the floor, and not the ceiling, of Sus-
pension Clause protection. St. Cyr, 533 U. S., at 301 (“[A]t the absolute
minimum, the Suspension Clause protects the writ ‘as it existed in
1789’ ” (quoting Felker v. Turpin, 518 U. S. 651, 664 (1996); emphasis
added)). The habeas remedy has “a dynamic element which itself was
adopted by the framers,” W. Hurst, The Process of Constitutional Con-
struction, in Supreme Court and Supreme Law 61 (E. Cahn ed. 1954)
(statement of P. Freund), such that “to truly understand the scope of the
writ ‘as it existed in 1789’ is to understand its protean dynamism, not
any of its specific applications,” S. Vladeck, The New Habeas Revision-
ism, 124 Harv. L. Rev. 941, 991 (2011); see also P. Halliday, Habeas Cor-
pus: From England to Empire 160 (2010). But resolving that debate is
unnecessary because Jones’s claim implicates even the majority’s crab-
bed view of the Suspension Clause.
25 See, e.g., Ex parte Siebold, 100 U. S. 371, 376–377 (1880) (noting that
a court’s “authority” to “try and imprison” an individual stems from a
particular statute and therefore a court has “no jurisdiction” if the law
does not lawfully apply to the prisoner); Ex parte Bollman, 4 Cranch 75,
136 (1807) (“[A]s the crime with which the prisoners stand charged has
not been committed, the court can only direct them to be discharged”);
Matter of Corryell, 22 Cal. 178, 181 (1863) (“The Court derives its juris-
diction from the law, and its jurisdiction extends to such matters as the
law declares to be criminal, and none other, and when it undertakes to
imprison for an offense to which no criminality is attached, it acts beyond
its jurisdiction”); Bushell’s Case, Vaughn. 135, 124 Eng. Rep. 1006 (C. P.
Cite as: 599 U. S. ____ (2023) 37
JACKSON, J., dissenting
Thus, it appears that, by its own lights, the majority to-
day renders an interpretation of §2255 that has potentially
significant constitutional implications.
IV
I conclude with an observation. Today’s ruling follows a
recent series of troubling AEDPA interpretations.26 All of
these opinions have now collectively managed to transform
a statute that Congress designed to provide for a rational
and orderly process of federal postconviction judicial review
into an aimless and chaotic exercise in futility. The route
to obtaining collateral relief is presently replete with imag-
ined artificial barriers, arbitrary dead ends, and traps for
the unwary. And today’s turn makes the journey palpably
absurd: It begins with the Supreme Court’s (rare) an-
nouncement that a certain claim for release exists and is
retroactively available to incarcerated individuals on collat-
——————
1670); W. Church, Writ of Habeas Corpus §236, p. 327 (2d ed. 1893)
(“[T]he prisoner may be discharged on habeas corpus, either before or
after judgment, where the statute or ordinance under which the proceed-
ings are inaugurated against him, is unconstitutional, as this is a juris-
dictional defect”).
26 See, e.g., Shoop v. Twyford, 596 U. S. ___, ___ (2022) (slip op., at 11)
(restricting the ability of federal courts to use the All Writs Act in
AEDPA cases); Shinn v. Martinez Ramirez, 596 U. S. ___, ___, ___–___,
___–___ (2022) (slip op., at 13, 15–16, 21–22) (holding that, although in-
effective assistance of postconviction counsel can be cause to excuse a
procedural default of a trial-ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim, a
federal court cannot gather evidence to establish postconviction counsel’s
ineffectiveness); Brown v. Davenport, 596 U. S. ___, ___, ___–___, ___, ___
(2022) (slip op., at 1, 5–7, 14, 25) (holding that a state prisoner who shows
that a trial error prejudiced him under this Court’s federal-habeas harm-
less-error standard must also run an AEDPA-derived gauntlet before re-
ceiving habeas relief ); Edwards v. Vannoy, 593 U. S. ___, ___–___, ___
(2021) (slip op., at 10–11, 15) (eliminating, without any party requesting
it, the ability of prisoners to argue that a new rule of criminal procedure
announced by this Court should be fully retroactive as a “watershed”
rule); see id., at ___–___ (KAGAN, J., dissenting) (slip op., at 12–13).
38 JONES v. HENDRIX
JACKSON, J., dissenting
eral review, and ends with the realization that only an ar-
bitrarily determined sliver of eligible prisoners (those who
have not had the temerity to file a prior motion) are actually
in a position to even ask a court to consider whether any
such relief might be provided.
It is quite clear that the Court’s rulings in this area of the
law reflect a general ethos that convicted prisoners should
not be permitted to file §2255 motions or obtain postconvic-
tion relief at all. But what matters is what Congress wants
with respect to the operation of the statutory provisions it
enacts. And, as I have shown, Congress’s aim in crafting
§2255 was to permit convicted prisoners to file postconvic-
tion motions asserting claims for collateral relief in a man-
ner that also curbs abusive filings. Congress did not
speak—one way or the other—as to what should happen if
a prisoner who has previously filed a §2255 motion gets a
new claim of legal innocence due to an intervening change
in the law.
Given Congress’s silence on this matter, in my view, there
is simply no justification for drawing a negative inference
that Congress meant for §2255 to operate in a manner that
is patently inconsistent with the reasons it passed that stat-
ute, or the background principles that animated the law
more broadly at the time of the statute’s enactment, or even
(possibly) core constitutional principles. Instead, §2255(e)
should be read—consistent with Congress’s general intent
to ensure equivalence between the claims available in ha-
beas and those that its new postconviction mechanism al-
lowed—to permit prisoners who have a new and retroactive
statutory innocence claim to file a habeas petition in lieu of
a §2255 motion. Alternatively, we should honor Congress’s
clear interest in preserving a prisoner’s ability to have one
meaningful opportunity to have all of his claims presented
to a court, by allowing Jones to file a petition asserting his
new and retroactive claim of statutory innocence, notwith-
standing what might otherwise be perceived as an ironclad
Cite as: 599 U. S. ____ (2023) 39
JACKSON, J., dissenting
bar in §2255(h).
In other words, as I see it, the negative inference that the
majority draws today rests on nothing—and certainly noth-
ing that actually derives from Congress’s intent. Nothing
in the text of §2255, background principles concerning ha-
beas relief, or AEDPA’s enactment history compels (or even
supports) the conclusion that Congress intended to com-
pletely foreclose claims like Jones’s. And it is especially
perverse to read the statute to lead to that result when do-
ing so gives rise to legally dissonant, arbitrary, and unten-
able outcomes. So, the majority’s “straightforward” deter-
mination that this statute does preclude a prisoner in
Jones’s position from filing a successive petition to assert a
legal innocence claim (which it reaches by refusing to follow
the procedural norm that would have correctly framed the
issue as a matter of congressional intent relative to clear-
statement principles) appears to stem from the Court’s own
views concerning finality, not the will of Congress.
Ultimately, of course, this all begs the question of how
(and whether) Congress will respond to the Court’s system-
atic neutering of the balanced postconviction processes that
the Legislature has established. It seems to me that today’s
opinion—which unjustifiably closes off all avenues for cer-
tain defendants to secure meaningful consideration of their
innocence claims—creates an opening for Congress to step
in and fix this problem.