28 U.S.C. § 2248
Section 2248 · Return or answer; conclusiveness
This is the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996
Amended 1 time on record
Applied in 44 court decisions — leading case Carlson v. Landon (1952)
Most recently applied in Baez-Sanchez v. Kolitwenzew (December 2018)
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year.Markers show enactment, consequential amendments, and circuit splits over this section — watch for a citation surge after a change or a disagreement. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
The allegations of a return to the writ of habeas corpus or of an answer to an order to show cause in a habeas corpus proceeding, if not traversed, shall be accepted as true except to the extent that the judge finds from the evidence that they are not true.
Editorial notes U.S. Code · Office of the Law Revision Counsel
Historical and Revision Notes
Derived from H.R. 4232, Seventy-ninth Congress, first session. At common law the return was conclusive and could not be controverted but it is now almost universally held that the return is not conclusive of the facts alleged therein. 39 C.J.S. pp. 664–666, §§98, 99.