Earlier quoted context omitted.
"It doesn't limit habeas rights--it creates stricter procedures for invoking that right" Much like free speech zones don't limit free speech rights, they just create stricter procedures for exercising those rights. AEDPA was not just about habeas corpus rights. It covers penalties for conspiracies that involve explosives and for hacking into government computers. It covers counterfeiting activities. It covers law enf…
Not every attempt to address security and terrorism can be deemed "rights-contracting." The other stuff in AEDPA doesn't contract any rights, just addresses particular kinds of crimes. The only thing that arguably contracts rights are the habeas portion, and that's more appropriately seen as improving habeas procedures rather than contracting rights.
Of course; only those that restrict our rights should be so labeled. That, unfortunately, is what the majority of attempts to address security concerns do.
"The other stuff in AEDPA doesn't contract any rights, just addresses particular kinds of crimes."
That is a tautology: take away the things that are bad, and you are left with something good. Ignore the sections that reduce, restrict, or eliminate our rights, and every knee-jerk reaction just addresses particular kinds of crimes (whether or not they do so in an effective way is another story).
"The only thing that arguably contracts rights are the habeas portion, and that's more appropriately seen as improving habeas procedures rather than contracting rights."
More appropriate according to you perhaps, and perhaps the right wing politicians who passed and signed the bill, but it is hard to say that we are "improving" civil rights by restricting them. Restricting habeas corpus is not an "improvement," it is a restriction on civil rights -- or alternatively, a contraction of our rights.
The entire argument for restricting habeas corpus in this manner was this: people facing the death penalty might try to avoid being executed by exhaustively testing every technical detail of their case in court. That does not sound like a bad thing to me, it sounds like people are making use of their rights in a life or death situation. Far too many innocent people have been executed to claim that there are too many ways for death row inmates to stave off their executions.
AEDPA was drafted by the kind of people who think The Ox-Bow Incident is a how-to manual on law enforcement. It is the mindset that sees a man like McVeigh challenging his execution and says, "How dare he! We are supposed to kill him, because he is GUILTY!" That is not how America is supposed to work. The criminal justice system in this country is meant to ensure that innocent people are not imprisoned or killed even if it means allowing guilty people to walk free and even if it means using tax dollars to pay for guilty people to challenge their conviction.