r Invasion the public
Safety may require it.

HABEAS CORPUS

Purpose of the Writ

This section, which restricts only the Federal Government and not the
States,[1435] is the only place in the Constitution where the writ of
_habeas corpus_ is mentioned. The framers took for granted that the
courts of the United States would be given jurisdiction to issue this,
the greatest of the safeguards of personal liberty embodied in the
common law, and the Judiciary Act of 1789[1436] provided for the
issuance of the writ according to "the usages and principles of law." At
common law the purpose of such a proceeding was to obtain the
liberation of persons who were imprisoned without just cause.[1437]
While the Supreme Court conceded at an early date that the authority of
the federal courts to entertain petitions for _habeas corpus_ derived
solely from acts of Congress,[1438] a narrow majority recently asserted
the right to expand the scope of the writ by judicial interpretation and
to sanction its use for a purpose unknown to the common law, i.e., to
bring a prisoner into court to argue his own appeal. Speaking for the
majority Justice Murphy declared that: "However, we do not conceive that
a circuit court of appeals, in issuing a writ of _habeas corpus_ under
Sec. 262 of the Judicial Code, is necessarily confined to the precise
forms of that writ in vogue at the common law or in the English judicial
system. Section 262 says that the writ must be agreeable to the usages
and principles of 'law,' a term which is unlimited by the common law or
the English law. And since 'law' is not a static concept, but expands
and develops as new problems arise, we do not believe that the forms of
the _habeas corpus_ writ authorized by Sec. 262 are only those recognized
in this country in 1789, when the original Judiciary Act containing the
substance of this section came into existence."[1439]

Errors Which May Be Corrected on Habeas Corpus

The writ of _habeas corpus_ provides a remedy for jurisdictional and
constitutional errors at the trial without limit as to time.[1440] It
may be used to correct errors of that order made by military as well as
by civil courts.[1441] Under the common law and the Act 31 Car. II c. 2
(1679), where a person was detained pursuant to a conviction by a court
having jurisdiction of the subject matter, _habeas corpus_ was available
only if a want of jurisdiction appeared on the face of the record of the
Court