Supreme Court limits federal prisoners' ability to bring some post-conviction challenges

[Igel]

3. I find the split reasonable.

Kagan, Sotomayor, Jackson focus on outcome, not process.

How thorough-going the focus on process is on a gradient--it's not a hard-and-fast rule.

The dissent sides with the accused and convicted.

The majority sides with process. "You know or should know what you did is wrong, then if you did it, it's wrong." The "ignorance of the law is no excuse" claim (of course, nobody wants to argue that if I'm unaware of the de-facto law when I screw over my 1040 that ignorance of the law is an excuse).

Otherwise I agree with you: If I violate the law in 2000 I violate the law--if it's changed in 2001, you know, I effing broke the law and I'm a transgressor. (I have trouble with retroactively extending the statute of limitations--that SoL is there for a reason and if I had to defend myself against an accusation from 40 years ago ... You know, I couldn't since I have no idea how to find anybody from 1983, esp. since many are dead and I've forgotten their names).