328
Opinion of the Court
(Even in an area, such as exhaustion, where judges have considerable discretionary authority, "appropriate deference to Congress' power to prescribe the basic procedural scheme under which a claim may be heard in a federal court requires fashioning of exhaustion principles in a manner consistent with congressional intent and any applicable statutory scheme").
We recognize there is considerable debate about whether the present Rule properly balances the relevant competing interests. See, e. g., U. S. Judicial Conference, Ad Hoc Committee on Federal Habeas Corpus in Capital Cases, Committee Report and Proposal 6, 18-21 (1989) (hereinafter Powell Report) (suggesting a statute of limitations for habeas petitions); American Bar Association, Toward a More Just and Effective System of Review in State Death Penalty Cases 29-30 (1990) (hereinafter ABA Report) (same). But, to debate the present Rule's effectiveness is to affirm, not to deny, its applicability. Moreover, that debate's focus upon Congress also reveals the institutional inappropriateness of amending the Rule, in effect, through an ad hoc judicial exception, rather than through congressional legislation or through the formal rulemaking process. See Vasquez v. Hillery, 474 U. S. 254, 265 (1986) ("[D]espite many attempts in recent years, Congress has yet to create a statute of limitations for federal habeas corpus actions. We should not lightly create a new judicial rule . . . to achieve the same end") (citation omitted); Appendix to this opinion (listing more than 80 bills that have proposed a statute of limitations for federal habeas cases since Vasquez, none of which has been adopted).
Fourth, contrary to the Court of Appeals' view, we do not believe that this Court, in Gomez v. United States Dist. Court for Northern Dist. of Cal., 503 U. S. 653 (1992), authorized ad hoc equitable departures from the Habeas Corpus Rules. The Court of Appeals relied heavily on the statement:
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