Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 487.0

529US2

Unit: $U46

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WILLIAMS v. TAYLOR

Opinion of the Court

activity rule is simply incorrect. See ante, at 387–388, n. 14.
As even a cursory review of Justice Thomas’ opinion and
my own opinion reveals, both the broader debate and the
speciﬁc statements to which we refer, see supra, at 410–411,
concerned precisely the issue of the standard of review to be
employed by federal habeas courts. The Wright opinions
conﬁrm what § 2254(d)(1)’s language already makes clear—
that an unreasonable application of federal law is different
from an incorrect or erroneous application of federal law.

Throughout this discussion the meaning of the phrase
“clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Su-
preme Court of the United States” has been put to the side.
That statutory phrase refers to the holdings, as opposed to
the dicta, of this Court’s decisions as of the time of the rele-
vant state-court decision.
In this respect, the “clearly es-
tablished Federal law” phrase bears only a slight connection
to our Teague jurisprudence. With one caveat, whatever
would qualify as an old rule under our Teague jurispru-
dence will constitute “clearly established Federal
law, as
determined by the Supreme Court of the United States”
under § 2254(d)(1). See, e. g., Stringer v. Black, 503 U. S.
222, 228 (1992) (using term “old rule”). The one caveat, as
the statutory language makes clear, is that § 2254(d)(1) re-
stricts the source of clearly established law to this Court’s
jurisprudence.

In sum, § 2254(d)(1) places a new constraint on the power
of a federal habeas court to grant a state prisoner’s applica-
tion for a writ of habeas corpus with respect to claims adjudi-
cated on the merits in state court. Under § 2254(d)(1), the
writ may issue only if one of the following two conditions is
satisﬁed—the state-court adjudication resulted in a decision
that (1) “was contrary to . . . clearly established Federal law,
as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States,”
or (2) “involved an unreasonable application of . . . clearly
established Federal
law, as determined by the Supreme
Court of the United States.” Under the “contrary to”