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95 Notre Dame L. Rev. 1809 (2019-2020)
The Enduring Challenges for Habeas Corpus

handle is hein.journals/tndl95 and id is 1841 raw text is: FEDERAL COURTS, PRACTICE & PROCEDURE THE ENDURING CHALLENGES FOR HABEAS CORPUS Diane P. Wood* Habeas Corpus: You may have the body INTRODUCTION The late great physicist Richard Feynman is thought once to have said If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quan- tum mechanics.1 Or maybe the idea expressed in that quip came from Niels Bohr, who is quoted as saying, Anyone who is not shocked by quantum the- ory has not understood it.'2 For our purposes, it does not matter who said it first: the key point is that there are some fields for which a little knowledge actually conceals the true nature of the challenge. It would be an overstate- ment to say that the law of habeas corpus approaches the mind-bending com- plexity of quantum mechanics.3 But habeas corpus has tied courts and legal scholars into knots for many years. One of the finest efforts to disentangle it-and to grapple with the question how, if at all, habeas corpus should be used for those whose detention flows from a criminal trial-is now fifty years c 2020 Diane P. Wood. Individuals and nonprofit institutions may reproduce and distribute copies of this Article in any format at or below cost, for educational purposes, so long as each copy identifies the authors, provides a citation to the Notre Dame Law Review, and includes this provision in the copyright notice. * Chief Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. 1 Talk: Richard Feynman, WIKIQUOTE, https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Richard Feynman (last updated Oct. 7, 2019) (attributing the quote, in 2014, to a university lecture called The Character of Physical Law). 2 Niels Bohr, WIKIQUOTE, https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Niels Bohr (last updated Feb. 11, 2020). There is dispute surrounding the quote. Karen Barad attributed this spe- cific variant to Bohr in KAREN MICHELLE BARAD, MEETING THE UNIVERSE HALFWAY 254 (2007), with the quote attributed to NIELS BOHR, THE PHILOSOPHICAL WRITINGS OF NIELS BOHR (1987), although without any page number or volume number. 3 If you doubt that characterization of quantum mechanics, I invite you to read the fascinating book by JOHN GRIBBIN, IN SEARCH OF SCHRODINGER'S CAT: QUANTUM PHYSICS AND REALITY (1984). You will be convinced. 18o9