In the most common types of

habeas corpus ''Habeas corpus'' (; from Medieval Latin, ) is a recourse in law through which a person can report an unlawful detention or imprisonment to a court and request that the court order the custodian of the person, usually a prison official, t ...

proceedings in the United States federal courts, a certificate of appealability is a legal document that must be issued before a petitioner may appeal from a denial of the writ. The certificate may only be issued when the petitioner has made a "substantial showing of the denial of a constitutional right." The application may be made explicitly, but a notice of appeal made without a certificate of appealability is treated as an implicit application for the certificate. "To obtain a ertificate of appealability the etitionermust make a request to a district or circuit court judge. In the application, the etitionerincludes the issues he wishes to raise on appeal. In general, the application process is informal, there is no hearing, and the government rarely files a brief in response to the prisoner's request. The determination is simply made in chambers. If the district court judge denies the request, the etitionermay apply to the circuit judge. In addition, a notice of appeal to the circuit court can be treated as a request for a COA." Under Rule 22 of the

Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure The Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure (officially abbreviated Fed. R. App. P.; colloquially FRAP) are a set of rules, promulgated by the Supreme Court of the United States on recommendation of an advisory committee, to govern procedures in cases ...

, "a certificate of appealability is not required when a state or its representative or the United States or its representative appeals." A certificate of appealability is also not required for petitioners seeking a writ of

coram nobis A writ of ''coram nobis'' (also writ of error ''coram nobis'', writ of ''coram vobis'', or writ of error ''coram vobis'') is a legal order allowing a court to correct its original judgment upon discovery of a fundamental error that did not appear i ...

; however, the writ of coram nobis is only available for those who are no longer in-custody (or on probation) and the issues raised in the petition could not have been known while the petitioner was in-custody. The

Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), , was introduced to the United States Congress in April 1995 as a Senate Bill (). The bill was passed with broad bipartisan support by Congress in response to the bombings of th ...

changed the procedures for issuing a certificate of appealability in federal court. Under the 1996 law, "there can be no appeal from a final order in a §2255 proceeding unless a circuit justice or judge issues a certificate of appealability." Welch v. United States, 578 U.S. ___
No. 15-6418
(2016). The

United States Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...

held in '' Slack v. McDaniel'', 529 U.S. 473 (2000), that the standard for issuing a certificate is whether "reasonable jurists could debate whether (or, for that matter, agree that) the petition should have been resolved in a different manner."Welch, slip op. at 6 (quoting Slack v. McDaniel, 529 U.S. 473, 484 (2000)) (quotation marks omitted).

References

{{law-stub United States habeas corpus law