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"A Structural Vision of Habeas Corpus"

By Douglas A. Berman

The title of this post is the title of this interesting new article by Eve Brensike Primus available via SSRN. Here is the abstract: For decades, scholars and judges have assumed that federal habeas corpus review of state court criminal convictions should focus on the individual rights of habeas petitioners and that the federal courts should ask whether a state prisoner is being unlawfully detained because the state violated his individual federal rights. This individualized approach to federal habeas review is expensive, time-consuming, and woefully ineffective in stopping states from violating defendants' federal rights. Indeed, many states systematically violate criminal defendants' federal rights with impunity. This Article proposes a new conception of federal habeas review under which the federal courts focus on states, not on individual petitioners...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on March 26, 2009 (boomark / email).