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Page Number: 477.0

529US2

Unit: $U46

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402

WILLIAMS v. TAYLOR

Opinion of the Court

only that a state-court decision is due the same respect as
any other “persuasive, well-reasoned authority.” Wright,
505 U. S., at 305.
“But this does not mean that we have held
in the past that federal courts must presume the correctness
of a state court’s legal conclusions on habeas, or that a state
court’s incorrect legal determination has ever been allowed
to stand because it was reasonable. We have always held
that federal courts, even on habeas, have an independent ob-
Ibid. Under the federal
ligation to say what the law is.”
habeas statute as it stood in 1992, then, our precedents dic-
tated that a federal court should grant a state prisoner’s pe-
tition for habeas relief if that court were to conclude in its
independent judgment that the relevant state court had
erred on a question of constitutional law or on a mixed con-
stitutional question.

If today’s case were governed by the federal habeas stat-
ute prior to Congress’ enactment of AEDPA in 1996, I would
agree with Justice Stevens that Williams’ petition for ha-
beas relief must be granted if we, in our independent judg-
ment, were to conclude that his Sixth Amendment right to
effective assistance of counsel was violated. See ante, at 389.

II
A

Williams’ case is not governed by the pre-1996 version of
the habeas statute. Because he ﬁled his petition in De-
cember 1997, Williams’ case is governed by the statute as
amended by AEDPA. Section 2254 now provides:

“(d) An application for a writ of habeas corpus on be-
half of a person in custody pursuant to the judgment of
a State court shall not be granted with respect to any
claim that was adjudicated on the merits in State court
proceedings unless the adjudication of the claim—

“(1) resulted in a decision that was contrary to, or
involved an unreasonable application of, clearly estab-