Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 567

529US2

Unit: $U50

[09-26-01 10:29:49] PAGES PGT: OPIN

492

SLACK v. McDANIEL

Opinion of Scalia, J.

dies’ ” and reﬁle in federal court, the court “ ‘could adjudicate
these claims under the same standard as would govern those
made in any other ﬁrst petition.’ ” Ante, at 487 (quoting
Martinez-Villareal, 523 U. S., at 644 (emphasis added)).
This does not require treating the later ﬁled petition as a
“ﬁrst” petition regardless of whether it bears any resem-
blance to the petition initially ﬁled.
In fact, Martinez-
Villareal clearly recognized the potential signiﬁcance of rais-
ing a new claim rather than merely renewing an old one: It
held that a petition raising a claim of incompetence to be
executed previously dismissed as premature was not second
or successive, but expressly distinguished, and left open, the
situation where the claim had not been raised in the earlier
petition. See id., at 645, n.

The State understandably fears the consequences of the
Court’s approach, which would allow federal petitions to be
repeatedly ﬁled and dismissed for lack of exhaustion, requir-
ing the State repeatedly to appear and expend its resources,
with no help in sight from supposed limitations on “second
or successive” petitions. The Court reassuringly observes
that this problem can be countered in other ways, without
“upsetting the established meaning of a second or successive
petition.” Ante, at 489. But as discussed above, it is not
“established” that a ﬁrst petition ceases to be a ﬁrst petition
when it is dismissed to permit exhaustion. And though the
problem of repetitive ﬁlings after dismissals for lack of ex-
haustion can of course be countered in other ways, so can the
It hap-
problem of repetitive ﬁlings for all other reasons.
pens to be the whole purpose of the “second or successive”
provision to solve precisely that problem—directly checking
the “vexatious litigant,” ante, at 488, rather than hoping that
the courts will use a patchwork of other provisions to achieve
the same end.
I do not disagree with the Court that district
courts may be able to limit repeated ﬁlings through appro-
priate orders pursuant to Federal Rules of Civil Procedure
41(a) and (b). This burden on district courts would not be