630
Opinion of the Court
preme Court.1 See generally United States v. Sanges, 144 U. S. 310, 319-322 (1892); L. Orfield, Criminal Appeals in America 244-246 (1939). The Court's authority to issue a writ of habeas corpus was limited to cases in which the convicting "court had no jurisdiction to render the judgment which it gave." Bain, supra, at 3; see also Preiser v. Rodriguez, 411 U. S. 475, 485 (1973). In 1887, therefore, this Court could examine constitutional errors in a criminal trial only on a writ of habeas corpus, and only then if it deemed the error "jurisdictional." The Court's desire to correct obvious constitutional violations led to a "somewhat expansive notion of 'jurisdiction,' " Custis v. United States, 511 U. S. 485, 494 (1994), which was "more a fiction than anything else," Wainwright v. Sykes, 433 U. S. 72, 79 (1977).
Bain's elastic concept of jurisdiction is not what the term "jurisdiction" means today, i. e., "the courts' statutory or constitutional power to adjudicate the case." Steel Co. v. Citizens for Better Environment, 523 U. S. 83, 89 (1998). This latter concept of subject-matter jurisdiction, because it involves a court's power to hear a case, can never be forfeited or waived. Consequently, defects in subject-matter jurisdiction require correction regardless of whether the error was raised in district court. See, e. g., Louisville & Nashville R. Co. v. Mottley, 211 U. S. 149 (1908). In contrast, the grand jury right can be waived. See Fed. Rule Crim. Proc. 7(b); Smith v. United States, 360 U. S. 1, 6 (1959).
Post-Bain cases confirm that defects in an indictment do not deprive a court of its power to adjudicate a case. In Lamar v. United States, 240 U. S. 60 (1916), the Court rejected the claim that "the court had no jurisdiction because the indictment does not charge a crime against the United States." Id., at 64. Justice Holmes explained that a dis-1 In 1889, Congress authorized direct review of capital cases in the Supreme Court. See 25 Stat. 655. In 1891, this right was extended to defendants in all cases involving "infamous crime[s]." 26 Stat. 827; see In re Claasen, 140 U. S. 200 (1891).
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