Habeas Corpus
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
ha'be-as kor'pus, a writ issued by a judge ordering a prisoner to be brought into court in order that the cause of his detention may be inquired into. The writ is addressed to the constable, sheriff, or marshal having the prisoner in custody. The court, that is to say, the judge, inquires into the charge on which the prisoner is held, and issues an order sending him back to jail, admitting him to bail, or setting him free, as may seem proper. The writ of habeas corpus is an ancient right of the English people. To make sure, it was inserted in Magna Charta , assented to by King John in 1215 at Runnymede. It is intended to prevent imprisonment on false or malicious charges. The desired writ may be applied for by an attorney or by any friend of the prisoner. The English colonists in America brought with them this priceless privilege as part of their common-law inheritance; and the Constitution of the United States provides that the privileges of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended unless, in case of actual rebellion and invasion, the public safety may require it. In order to avoid conflicts of authority it has been decided by the United States supreme court that the court of a state may not issue a writ of habeas corpus for a prisoner held in federal custody. The resort in such cases must be to a federal court. The necessity of provision like that of the habeas corpus may be understood the more readily when we recall that in France prisoners of state were confined in the Bastille for years, or even for life. Their friends had no possible way of bringing them into court in order that the causes of their detention, however unjust, might be inquired into. See Bastille
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's 1910 claim that the writ "was inserted in Magna Charta" is one point modern scholars would strike out: Magna Carta's chapter 39 promises lawful judgment but names no such writ, which grew out of later common-law practice and was given statutory teeth by the English Habeas Corpus Act of 1679. The bigger change is in what the writ now does. In the United States it became, after the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Allen (1953), the main federal channel for reviewing state criminal convictions — a use Aiton never mentions — before Congress sharply restricted it in the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996. And the suspension clause Aiton quotes was fought over again in Boumediene v. Bush (2008), when the Court held that prisoners held at Guantánamo Bay could petition federal courts, a question no 1910 writer could have imagined.
Written for this edition, 2026.