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Page Number: 479.0

529US2

Unit: $U46

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404

WILLIAMS v. TAYLOR

Opinion of the Court

ible with the requirements of the Constitution is a matter
Ibid. (emphasis
for independent federal determination.”
added).

That Justice Stevens would ﬁnd the new § 2254(d)(1) to
have no effect on the prior law of habeas corpus is remark-
able given his apparent acknowledgment that Congress
wished to bring change to the ﬁeld. See ante, at 386 (“Con-
gress wished to curb delays, to prevent ‘retrials’ on federal
habeas, and to give effect to state convictions to the extent
possible under law”). That acknowledgment is correct and
signiﬁcant to this case.
It cannot be disputed that Congress
viewed § 2254(d)(1) as an important means by which its goals
for habeas reform would be achieved.

Justice Stevens arrives at his erroneous interpretation
by means of one critical misstep. He fails to give independ-
ent meaning to both the “contrary to” and “unreasonable ap-
plication” clauses of the statute. See, e. g., ante, at 384 (“We
are not persuaded that the phrases deﬁne two mutually ex-
clusive categories of questions”). By reading § 2254(d)(1) as
one general restriction on the power of the federal habeas
court, Justice Stevens manages to avoid confronting the
speciﬁc meaning of the statute’s “unreasonable application”
clause and its ramiﬁcations for the independent-review rule.
It is, however, a cardinal principle of statutory construction
that we must “ ‘give effect, if possible, to every clause and
word of a statute.’ ” United States v. Menasche, 348 U. S.
528, 538–539 (1955) (quoting Montclair v. Ramsdell, 107 U. S.
147, 152 (1883)). Section 2254(d)(1) deﬁnes two categories
of cases in which a state prisoner may obtain federal habeas
relief with respect to a claim adjudicated on the merits in
state court. Under the statute, a federal court may grant a
writ of habeas corpus if the relevant state-court decision was
either (1) “contrary to . . . clearly established Federal law,
as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States,”
or (2) “involved an unreasonable application of . . . clearly