Review
“An extremely important contribution to our understanding of the importance of habeas corpus in American law and in American history. Freedman explains and places in their proper context a series of historically important cases, dating from the earliest history of the country to the present and demonstrates the way racial and ethnic prejudice have had, and continue to have, a corrosive effect on our criminal justice process. In an age when Congress has sought to constrict the use and value of habeas corpus, Freedman reminds us why it is vital to a free society, and a fair society, to provide more, not less, access to the ‘Great Writ.&8217;”
-Paul Finkelman,Chapman Distinguished Professor, University of Tulsa College of Law
“Legal analysis at its best.”
-Austin Sarat,William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science, Amherst College
“Habeas Corpus is a trustworthy account by a distinguished legal historian. It serves both scholars who wish to revisit the underpinnings of habeas corpus as well as beginners seeking to understand what this process has meant to our system.”
-Legal Times
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“Freedman’s lively prose and careful analysis of early debates and research into the politics, passions and history of the times give us a new picture of the background to habeas corpus as we know it now.”
-New York Law Journal
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“Provides a fresh analysis of classic Supreme Court opinions by John Marshall, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Felix Frankfurter. Freedman investigates background materials that illuminate the Court's assessment of its decisions, and introduces and explores historical materials that have only recently become available. . . . He builds an impressive argument that severe limits on federal court jurisdiction can be instituted today only by departing fundamentally from the past. Freedman's treatment of this admittedly complex subject is readily accessible to nonspecialists. This fine new book will be of interest and value to anyone seriously concerned with the function of federal courts in modern American society.”
-Larry Yackle,Professor of Law, Boston University School of Law
From the Back Cover
Habeas corpus is the process by which state prisoners--particularly those on death row--appeal to federal courts to have their convictions overturned. Its proper role in our criminal justice system has always been hotly contested, especially in the wake of 1996 legislation curtailing the ability of prisoners to appeal their sentences.
In this timely volume, Eric M. Freedman reexamines four of the Supreme Court's most important habeas corpus rulings: one by Chief Justice John Marshall in 1807 concerning Aaron Burr's conspiracy, two arising from the traumatic national events of the 1915 Lea Frank case and the 1923 cases growing out of murderous race riots in Elaine County, Arkansas, and one case from 1953 that dramatized some of the ugliest features of Southern justice of the period. In each instance, Freedman uncovers new primary sources and tells the stories of the cases through such documents as the justices' draft opinions and the memos of Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist from when he was a law clerk on the court. In bracing and accessible language, Freedman then presents an interpretation that rewrites the conventional view.
Building on these results, Freedman challenges legalistic limits on habeas corpus and demonstrates how a vigorous writ is central to implementing the fundamental conceptions of individual liberty and constrained government power that underlie the Constitution.
