Cite as: 533 U. S. 289 (2001)
Scalia, J., dissenting
thorized the bankrupt's continued detention by the commissioners until "otherwise discharged by due course of law," whereas the statute authorized commitment only "till [the bankrupt] submit himself to be examined by the commissioners." (Emphasis deleted.) There is nothing pertaining to executive discretion here.
All the other framing-era or earlier cases cited in the Court's opinion—indeed, all the later Supreme Court cases until United States ex rel. Accardi v. Shaughnessy, 347 U. S. 260, in 1954—provide habeas relief from executive detention only when the custodian had no legal authority to detain. See 3 J. Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States § 1333, p. 206 (1833) (the writ lies to ascertain whether a "sufficient ground of detention appears"). The fact is that, far from forming a traditional basis for issuance of the writ of habeas corpus, the whole "concept of 'discretion' was not well developed at common law," Hafetz, The Untold Story of Noncriminal Habeas Corpus and the 1996 Immigration Acts, 107 Yale L. J. 2509, 2534 (1998), quoted in Brief for Respondent in Calcano-Martinez v. INS, O. T. 2000, No. 00-1011, p. 37. An exhaustive search of cases antedating the Suspension Clause discloses few instances in which courts even discussed the concept of executive discretion; and on the rare occasions when they did, they simply confirmed what seems obvious from the paucity of such discussions—namely, that courts understood executive discretion as lying entirely beyond the judicial ken. See, e. g., Chalacombe's Case, supra, at 342. That is precisely what one would expect, since even the executive's evaluation of the facts—a duty that was a good deal more than discretionary—was not subject to review on habeas. Both in this country, until passage of the Habeas Corpus Act of 1867, and in England, the longstanding rule had been that the truth of the custodian's return could not be controverted. See, e. g., Opinion on the Writ of Habeas Corpus, Wilm. 77, 107, 97 Eng. Rep. 29, 43 (H. L. 1758); Note, Developments in
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