Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/04pdf/04-278.pdf
Page Number: 30.0

Cite as:  545 U. S. ____ (2005) 

3 

STEVENS, J., dissenting 

defined by existing rules or understandings that stem from 
an  independent  source  such  as  state  law—rules  or  under-
standings  that  secure  certain  benefits  and  that  support 
claims of entitlement to those benefits”). 

There was a time when our tradition of judicial restraint 
would have led this Court to defer to the judgment of more 
qualified  tribunals  in  seeking  the  correct  answer  to  that 
difficult  question  of  Colorado  law.    Unfortunately,  al-
though the majority properly identifies the “central state-
law  question”  in  this  case  as  “whether  Colorado  law  gave 
respondent a right to police enforcement of the restraining 
order,” ante, at 8, it has chosen to ignore our settled prac-
tice by providing its own answer to that question.  Before 
identifying the flaws in the Court’s ruling on the merits, I 
shall briefly comment on our past practice. 

I 

The  majority’s  decision  to  plunge  ahead  with  its  own 
analysis  of  Colorado  law  imprudently  departs  from  this 
Court’s  longstanding  policy  of  paying  “deference  [to]  the 
views of a federal court as to the law of a State within its 
jurisdiction.”  Phillips  v.  Washington  Legal  Foundation, 
524  U. S.  156,  167  (1998);  see  also  Bishop  v.  Wood,  426 
U. S.  341,  346,  and  n. 10  (1976)  (collecting  cases).    This 
policy  is  not  only  efficient,  but  it  reflects  “our  belief  that 
district  courts  and  courts  of  appeal  are  better  schooled  in 
and  more  able  to  interpret  the  laws  of  their  respective 
States.”  Brockett  v.  Spokane  Arcades,  Inc.,  472  U. S.  491, 
500–501  (1985);  Hillsborough  v.  Cromwell,  326  U. S.  620, 
629–630 (1946) (endorsing “great deference to the views of 
the judges of those courts ‘who are familiar with the intri-
cacies and trends of local law and practice’ ”).  Accordingly, 
we  have  declined  to  show  deference  only  in  rare  cases  in 
which  the  court  of  appeal’s  resolution  of  state  law  was 
“clearly  wrong”  or  otherwise  seriously  deficient.    See 
Brockett, 472 U. S., at 500, n. 9; accord, Leavitt v. Jane L.,