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WILLIAMS v. TAYLOR

Opinion of O’Connor, J.

of Terry Williams’ application for state habeas corpus relief
I agree with that determi-
resulted in just such a decision.
nation and join Parts I, III, and IV of the Court’s opinion.
Because I disagree, however, with the interpretation of
§ 2254(d)(1) set forth in Part II of Justice Stevens’ opinion,
I write separately to explain my views.

I

Before 1996, this Court held that a federal court entertain-
ing a state prisoner’s application for habeas relief must exer-
cise its independent judgment when deciding both questions
of constitutional law and mixed constitutional questions (i. e.,
application of constitutional law to fact). See, e. g., Miller v.
Fenton, 474 U. S. 104, 112 (1985).
In other words, a federal
habeas court owed no deference to a state court’s resolution
of such questions of law or mixed questions.
In 1991, in the
case of Wright v. West, 502 U. S. 1021, we revisited our prior
holdings by asking the parties to address the following ques-
tion in their briefs:

“In determining whether to grant a petition for writ of
habeas corpus by a person in custody pursuant to the
judgment of a state court, should a federal court give
deference to the state court’s application of law to the
speciﬁc facts of the petitioner’s case or should it review
the state court’s determination de novo?”

Ibid.

Although our ultimate decision did not turn on the answer
to that question, our several opinions did join issue on it.
See Wright v. West, 505 U. S. 277 (1992).

Justice Thomas, announcing the judgment of the Court,
acknowledged that our precedents had “treat[ed] as settled
the rule that mixed constitutional questions are ‘subject to
plenary federal review’ on habeas.”
Id., at 289 (quoting
Miller, supra, at 112). He contended, nevertheless, that
those decisions did not foreclose the Court from applying a
rule of deferential review for reasonableness in future cases.