The Body And the State: Habeas Corpus And American Jurisprudence

Traces the history of the writ of habeas corpus and its influence on federal-state relations.

Federman's scholarship is impressive, and he has successfully mapped out and made intelligible the underlying issues that help make sense of the history of the writ--its patterns of expansion and constriction in the two centuries of its application. He makes a convincing case for dividing the writ into discrete historical periods, and he analyzes the interplay between the dominant narratives and counternarratives in each epoch. This is an important work that accomplishes what no other work has so far accomplished.