664
Opinion of the Court
for purposes of decision here, that the Suspension Clause of the Constitution refers to the writ as it exists today, rather than as it existed in 1789. See Swain v. Pressley, 430 U. S. 372 (1977); id., at 384 (Burger, C. J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment).
The Act requires a habeas petitioner to obtain leave from the court of appeals before filing a second habeas petition in the district court. But this requirement simply transfers from the district court to the court of appeals a screening function which would previously have been performed by the district court as required by 28 U. S. C. § 2254 Rule 9(b). The Act also codifies some of the pre-existing limits on successive petitions, and further restricts the availability of relief to habeas petitioners. But we have long recognized that "the power to award the writ by any of the courts of the United States, must be given by written law," Ex parte Boll-man, 4 Cranch 75, 94 (1807), and we have likewise recognized that judgments about the proper scope of the writ are "normally for Congress to make." Lonchar v. Thomas, 517 U. S. 314, 323 (1996).
The new restrictions on successive petitions constitute a modified res judicata rule, a restraint on what is called in habeas corpus practice "abuse of the writ." In McCleskey v. Zant, 499 U. S. 467 (1991), we said that "the doctrine of abuse of the writ refers to a complex and evolving body of equitable principles informed and controlled by historical usage, statutory developments, and judicial decisions." Id., at 489. The added restrictions which the Act places on second habeas petitions are well within the compass of this evolutionary process, and we hold that they do not amount to a "suspension" of the writ contrary to Article I, § 9.
IV
We have answered the questions presented by the petition for certiorari in this case, and we now dispose of the petition
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