Abstract: Until April 2011, every federal habeas court in America could conduct hearings and consider new evidence when reviewing a state court’s interpretation of federal law under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA). When state proceedings did not allow a petitioner a fair chance to develop the factual record, federal courts could, and sometimes did, fill the gap. The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2011 opinion in Cullen v. Pinholster significantly altered this landscape. By limiting federal review to the state record for claims already adjudicated in state court, Pinholster places an enormous premium on the adequate development of the state-court record. After Pinholster, petitioners denied the ability to develop their claims in state court will seek alternative solutions. Indeed, state defendants have already begun to pursue some of the potential paths around Pinholster, suggesting what is to come. The resulting challenges will raise fundamental, unanswered questions about AEDPA, the Suspension Clause, and the role of due process in postconviction review. This Article explores likely paths forward, filling the gaps that Pinholster, together with the Court’s recent decisions in Boumediene v. Bush, District Attorney’s Office v. Osborne, and Skinner v. Switzer, has created in both the literature and the jurisprudence.
News and Events
-
BCLR Releases Vol. LIV No. 2
Boston College Law Review is pleased to announce the publication of our March 2013 issue. • Jeremy Waldron, Separation of [...]
-
BCLR Elects New Board of Editors
On March 22, 2013, the membership of the Boston College Law Review elected a new Board of Editors for the [...]
-
BCLR Editors Win Student Writing Competitions
Two members of the Boston College Law Review‘s Executive Board, Laura Kaplan and Michael Palmisciano, recently won national writing competitions [...]
Recent Issues
Boston College Law Review
Boston College Law School • 885 Centre Street • Newton, MA 02459-1163
Phone: (617) 552-8557 | E-mail: [email protected]
site by stereo
