Your monthly support provides voters the knowledge they need to make confident decisions at the polls. Donate today.
Collateral review
Collateral review is a term that means "a judicial reexamination of a judgment or claim in a proceeding outside of the direct review process."[1]
Writing for a unanimous Supreme Court, Justice Samuel Alito defined the term collateral review for the court via the court's 2011 opinion in Wall v. Kholi. In that opinion, Justice Alito noted, regarding collateral review, that the court had "never provided a comprehensive definition of that term."[1] In reviewing the customary and preferred sense of the words collateral and review, Justice Alito concluded that the term collateral review "refers to judicial review that occurs in a proceeding outside of the direct review process."[1]
Use in federal courts
Professor Hiroshi Motomura, writing in the Cornell Law Review, distinguished between direct and collateral review as follows:[2]
| “ |
According to a traditional definition, direct review refers to multiple layers of review in the 'same proceeding' ... In contrast, collateral review presupposed that decision making, including multiple layers of direct review by agencies and/or courts, is complete. Collateral review, according to this understanding of the term, refers to a 'separate proceeding' that reassesses some aspects of the first proceeding, including its direct review stages. [3] |
” |
Justice Alito's opinion in Wall noted certain forms of collateral review in federal courts, such as habeas corpus and coram nobis. Regarding habeas review, Professor Erwin Chemerinsky noted in the 4th edition of Federal Jurisdiction, "Technically, federal court consideration of the habeas corpus petition is not considered a direct review of the state court decision; rather, the petition constitutes a separate civil suit filed in federal court and is termed collateral relief."[2][4]
See also
Footnotes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Supreme Court of the United States, Wall v. Kholi, March 7, 2011
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Cornell Law Review, "Immigration law and federal court jurisdiction through the lens of habeas corpus," January 2006
- ↑ Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
- ↑ Professor Chemerinsky's quote is cited as footnote 76 in Professor Motomura's article in the Cornell Law Review.
