CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: In April, President Clinton signed a bill into law that would limit access to federal court by prison inmates. The bill, known as the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, was in part a reaction by the President and Congress to the long delays in getting convicted felons executed. In order to speed up the process, the bill imposes strict time limits on Death Row inmates’ appeals. It also permits only one federal appeal of a state court conviction.

The case in front of the court today was brought by Ellis Wayne Felker, who was convicted and sentenced to death in 1983 for sodomizing and murdering a woman in Georgia. Felker’s lawyers based their appeals on the principle of habeas corpus, a provision that allows a person to test whether he is being held in prison legally. The Supreme Court turned down Felker’s appeal for a hearing three times, the last time just before the President signed the effective death penalty act. Felker’s lawyers filed a fourth appeal, and the Supreme Court this time agreed to hear his arguments. The court’s hearing of the Felker case is regarded as a test for whether the act President Clinton signed in April is constitutional.

JIM LEHRER: And now for more on today’s arguments, NewsHour regular Stuart Taylor, correspondent with the "American Lawyer" and "Legal Times." Stuart, welcome.

STUART TAYLOR, The American Lawyer: Nice to be here.

JIM LEHRER: What is the constitutional issue involved in this?

MR. TAYLOR: The issue as framed by the Supreme Court is whether this new law signed by the President is unconstitutional in that it restricts the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court to hear a certain class of these habeas corpus cases, and jurisdiction is power. So it goes to the relative power of Congress versus the Supreme Court.