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26 (2001) (Manning). And, before today, this Court has repeatedly recognized the importance of the clear-statement rule with respect to any analysis of an Act of Congress that potentially restricts access to the writ of habeas corpus or its statutory equivalent. In fact, “where a provision precluding review is claimed to bar habeas review,” we have “required a particularly clear statement.” Demore v. Kim, 538 U. S. 510, 517 (2003) (emphasis added).

The clear-statement rule is plainly implicated here. Under the state of the law at the time AEDPA was enacted, prisoners were entitled to bring a petition to assert a new claim of legal innocence, even a second or successive petition. . Congress could change that state of affairs, but, under the clear-statement rule, if it intended to do so, it needed to speak clearly to effectuate that result.

At a more general level of analysis, the clear-statement rule also applies to these circumstances because the interpretive question in this case touches upon the venerated writ of habeas corpus—the only writ that is expressly mentioned in the Constitution. Art. I, §9, cl. 2; Holland, 560 U. S., at 649. We have long recognized that the clear-statement rule serves the core liberty interests protected by the writ of habeas corpus. See Ex parte Yerger, 8 Wall., at 103 (holding, more than 150 years ago, that the Court had jurisdiction over a particular habeas petition and relying on the clear-statement rule to reach that conclusion, explaining that, to conclude otherwise, would “greatly weaken the efficacy of the writ” and “deprive the citizen in many cases of its benefits”). Likewise, in modern times, we have been especially careful to reference clear-statement principles,