William Rehnquist

“ Under the definition of "prevailing" law embraced today, federal courts may not entertain habeas petitions challenging state-court rejections of constitutional claims unless those state decisions are clearly erroneous. So at best, the threat of habeas review will deter state courts only from completely indefensible rejections of federal claims. ”

“ As a result, we established a bright-line rule: a suspect who has "expressed his desire to deal with the police only through counsel is not subject to further interrogation by the authorities until counsel has been made available to him, unless the accused himself initiates further communication, exchanges, or conversations with the police." ”

“ Habeas petitioners may no longer benefit from legal rulings that expand required procedural protections. But under the Court's regime, habeas petitioners who have valid claims under "prevailing" law even as defined today may nevertheless lose their claims should a federal court on habeas review decide to issue a "new" rule of law in favor of the State (indeed, with increasing frequency, States attempt to defend decisions denying federal habeas relief on the ground that the existing Supreme Court precedent upon which the petitioner purports to rely should be overruled or modified) . ”

“ See also, e.g., Kaufman, supra, 394 U.S., at 228, 89 S.Ct., at 1075 ("Congress has determined that the full protection of . . . constitutional rights requires the availability of a mechanism for collateral attack. The right then is not merely to afed eral forum but to full and fair consideration of constitutional claims") . It has long been established, therefore, that federal habeas proceedings ought not accord any deference to the state court's constitutional ruling under collateral attack. ”

“ In the context of this case, Justice Harlan would not have held the rule in Roberson to be "new" today unless he could "say with . . . assurance that this Court would have ruled differently" (i.e., in the State's favor) at the time Butler's conviction became final. 394 U.S., at 264, 89 S.Ct., at 1041 (emphasis added) . In contrast, the majority embraces the opposite presumption; it holds Roberson § rule to be "new" because it cannot say with assurance that the Court could not have ruled in favor of the State at that time. ”

“ According to counsel, the opinion in Roberson showed that the Court believed Roberson's case to be within the "logical compass" of Edwards. Tr. of Oral Arg. passim.
But the fact that a court says that its decision is within the "logical compass" of an earlier decision, or indeed that it is "controlled" by a prior decision, is not conclusive for purposes of deciding whether the current decision is a "new rule" under Teague. Courts frequently view their decisions as being "controlled" or "governed" by prior opinions even when aware of reasonable contrary conclusions reached by other courts. ”

“ It is Congress and not this Court who is " 'responsible for defining the scope of the writ.' " Ante, at 413 (citations omitted) . [13] Yet the majority, whose Members often pride themselves on their reluctance to play an "activist" judicial role by infringing upon legislative prerogatives, does not hesitate today to dismantle Congress' extension of federal habeas to state prisoners. Hereafter, federal habeas relief will be available in only the most egregious cases, in which state courts have flouted applicable Supreme Court precedent that cannot be distinguished on any arguable basis. ”

“ The inability of lower courts to predict significant reformulations by this Court of the principles underlying prior precedents does not excuse them from the obligation to draw reasoned conclusions from principles that are well established at the time of their decisions. ”

“ Thus the Court's holding today is unfaithful even to the purported progenitor of its position.
Most significantly, the limited scope of the deterrence promised by the Court's holding today defeats Congress' purpose in establishing the scheme of federal habeas review of state criminal proceedings. Congress established such review because it perceived a potential "inadequacy of state procedures to raise and preserve federal claims [and was] concern [ed] that state judges may be unsympathetic to federally created rights." ”

“ Given the 'broad scope of constitutional issues cognizable on habeas,' . . . it is 'sounder, in adjudicating habeas petitions, generally to apply the law prevailing at the time a conviction became final than it is to seek to dispose of [habeas] cases on the basis of intervening changes in constitutional interpretation.' . . . ' [T] he threat of habeas serves as a necessary additional incentive for trial and appellate courts throughout the land to conduct their proceedings in a manner consistent with established constitutional standards. ”

“ On the other hand, the majority might mean that the lower court decisions foreshadowing the dissent's position in Roberson, though ultimately erroneous, were nevertheless "reasonable" according to some objective criterion of adjudication. [2] But the Court does not purport to identify any such criterion or explain its application in this case. Instead, the Court announces in peremptory fashion that " [i] t would not have been an illogical or even a grudging application of Edwards to decide that it did not extend to the facts of Roberson." ”

“ Moreover, Congress' insistence that "federal courts have the 'last say' with respect to questions of federal law" raised during state criminal proceedings, Kaufman, supra, at 225, 89 S.Ct., at 1073, cannot be satisfied by this Court's jurisdiction to review state proceedings directly. State courts are well aware that the "Supreme Court's burden and responsibility are too great to permit it to review and correct every misstep made by the lower courts in the application of accepted principles. Hence the Court generally will not grant certiorari just because the decision below may be erroneous." ”

“ In order to perform this deterrence function, . . . the habeas court need only apply the constitutional standards that prevailed at the time the original proceedings took place.' " Teague, supra, at 306, 109 S.Ct., at 1073 (plurality opinion) (emphasis added; some brackets in original; some internal citations omitted) .
" [I] n many ways the application of new rules to cases on collateral review may be more intrusive than the enjoining of [state] criminal prosecutions . . . ”

“ According to the panel, the Edwards-Roberson limitations on police interrogation are only tangentially related to the truth-finding function. 864 F.2d, at 25. They are viewed most accurately as part of the prophylactic protection of the Fifth Amendment right to counsel created to be "guidelines" for the law enforcement profession. Ibid. (citing Roberson, supra, 486 U.S., at 680-682, 108 S.Ct., at 2097-2098) . The interrogation of Butler, while unquestionably contrary to present "guidelines," was conducted in strict accordance with established law at the time. ”

“ The majority suggests obliquely that adoption of a " 'new rule' principle [that] validates reasonable, good-faith interpretations of existing precedents," ante, at 414-which in turn means that adjudication according to "prevailing" law requires only strict "decisional obedience" to existing precedents would still serve the "deterrence function" animating federal habeas review. ”

“ Because we operate from the premise that such procedures would be so central to an accurate determination of innocence or guilt, we believe it unlikely that many such components of basic due process have yet to emerge. ”

“ Congress thus entitled petitioners to de novo review of their federal claims in federal habeas proceedings. [10] But the Court's decision today denies federal courts the role on habeas review that Congress envisioned because it limits them to remedying only clearly unreasonable state-court applications of federal law, rather than all erroneous ones. ”

“ In the vast majority of cases, however, where the new decision is reached by an extension of the reasoning of previous cases, the inquiry will be more difficult. We said in Teague:
" 'The relevant frame of reference . . . is not the purpose of the new rule whose benefit the [defendant] seeks, but instead the purposes for which the writ of habeas corpus is made available.' Mackey [v. United States, 401 U.S. 667, 682, 91 S.Ct. 1160, 1175, 28 L.Ed.2d 404 (1971) (Harlan, J., concurring in judgments in part and dissenting in part) ] . . . . ”

“ Justice Harlan would have held state courts responsible for "appl [ying] a well-established constitutional principle to govern a case which is closely analogous to those which have been previously considered in the prior case law." ”