A Tale of Two Laws: The U.S. Congress Confronts Habeas Corpus Petitions And Section 1983 Lawsuits Fred Cheesman, II Roger A. Hanson Brian J. Ostrom National Center for State Courts 300 Newport Avenue Williamsburg, Virginia 23185 March, 1999 An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Law and Society Association, Aspen, Colorado, June, 1998. The research for this report was supported by the Court Statistics Project, a joint project of the Conference of State Court Administrators, the State Justice Institute, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, and the National Center for State Courts. The authors would also like to acknowledge the data they received from the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts and the Bureau of Justice Statistics. The views expressed and the conclusions drawn in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the Conference of State Court Administrators, State Justice Institute, Bureau of Justice Statistics, the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts or the National Center for State Courts. Finally, the authors wish to offer encomiums to the many individuals who offered constructive criticisms of previous drafts of this paper. They include Lois Bloom, Joe Cecil, George Cole, Colleen Danos, Malcolm Feeley, Carol Flango, Victor Flango, Steve Ehrlich, Tom Henderson, Fred Lederer, Terry Nafisi, Charles Ostrom, David Rauma, Ira Robbins, David Rottman, John Scalia, Roger Warren, and Karen Way.