In the case of Loper v. Beto, 1971, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of petitioner Robert Loper, who was serving a life sentence for murder in Texas and had been denied his right to file a habeas corpus petition challenging his conviction on constitutional grounds. The court held that it was unconstitutional to deny an inmate's request for habeas corpus solely because he had previously filed unsuccessful petitions without new evidence or legal arguments. This ruling overturned a previous decision by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals which upheld this denial based on "abuse of writ" doctrine - filing multiple applications with similar claims as groundless and vexatious litigation tactics. The Supreme Court emphasized that every prisoner has a fundamental right under the Constitution to challenge their detention if they believe it is unlawful, regardless of how many times they have done so before.

In the dissenting opinion for Loper v. Beto, Justice Black argued that the majority's decision to overturn a state law based on its interpretation of the Eighth Amendment was an overreach of judicial power. He contended that it is not within the Court's purview to decide what constitutes cruel and unusual punishment in this context, as such decisions should be left up to individual states' legislatures. Furthermore, he disagreed with the majority's assertion that using prior convictions obtained without counsel as evidence in subsequent trials violates a defendant’s constitutional rights. In his view, past uncounseled convictions are still valid indicators of guilt or innocence and can provide valuable information about a defendant’s character and criminal history.