The bill was passed with broad bipartisan support by Congress in response to the bombings of the World Trade Center and Oklahoma City.

The Oklahoma City bombing had presented the Republican-controlled Congress an opportunity to push through federal habeas corpus reform.

[9] Within days of the AEDPA being introduced, there were disagreements between Republican and Democratic leadership over combining federal habeas corpus reform with the anti-terrorism law.

Some of AEDPA's habeas provisions were based on the ad hoc Powell Committee's recommendations including restricting de novo review-based federal evidentiary hearings.

It was to eliminate the interminable delays in the execution of state and federal criminal sentences and ... to streamline and simplify [habeas corpus]President Clinton acknowledged that "it should not take eight or nine years and three trips to the Supreme Court to finalize whether a person, in fact, was properly convicted or not" but he did not want the anti-terrorism bill to stall over the divisive proposal.

Directed resources towards combatting international counterfeiting of U.S. currency, compiling statistics relating to the intimidation of government employees, and assessing and reducing the threat to law enforcement officers from the criminal use of firearms and ammunition.

Increased funding authorizations for law enforcement including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Justice, Immigration and Naturalization Service, and more.

Expanded the territorial sea, changed proof of citizenship requirements, and limited legal representation fees and expenses in capital cases.

For example, the judicially-created abuse-of-the-writ doctrine, established in McCleskey v. Zant (1991),[22] had restricted the presentation of new claims through subsequent habeas petitions.

[23] Cullen v. Pinholster, held that federal courts reviewing Strickland claims under AEDPA were limited to deciding whether the state decision was reasonable based on the record.

The Supreme Court held unanimously, in Felker v. Turpin, 518 U.S. 651 (1997), that the limitations did not unconstitutionally suspend the writ.

Those in favor of the bill say that the act prevents those convicted of crimes from being able to "thwart justice and avoid just punishment by filing frivolous appeals for years on end",[29] while critics argue that the inability to make multiple appeals increases the risk of an innocent person being killed.

The section allowing a single Immigration and Naturalization officer to decide whether to offer asylum to an individual who claims persecution but does not have identification was specifically targeted.

The provision extending the ability of officers to deport anyone who illegally entered the country at any point in time without a hearing before a judge was also criticized.

In Sessoms v. Grounds (Ninth Circuit), the majority of the judges believed that the state erred in not throwing out testimony made in the absence of the defendant's attorney after he had requested counsel, but they were required to overturn his appeal.