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529US2

Unit: $U46

[10-07-01 17:18:24] PAGES PGT: OPIN

Cite as: 529 U. S. 362 (2000)

387

Opinion of Stevens, J.

any difference in the so-called “deference” depending on
which of the two phrases is implicated.13 Whatever “defer-
ence” Congress had in mind with respect to both phrases, it
surely is not a requirement that federal courts actually defer
to a state-court application of the federal law that is, in the
independent judgment of the federal court, in error. As
Judge Easterbrook noted with respect to the phrase “con-
trary to”:

“Section 2254(d) requires us to give state courts’ opin-
ions a respectful reading, and to listen carefully to their
conclusions, but when the state court addresses a legal
question, it is the law ‘as determined by the Supreme
Court of the United States’ that prevails.” Lindh, 96
F. 3d, at 869.14

13 As Judge Easterbrook has noted, the statute surely does not require
the kind of “deference” appropriate in other contexts: “It does not tell us
to ‘defer’ to state decisions, as if the Constitution means one thing in
Wisconsin and another in Indiana. Nor does it tell us to treat state courts
the way we treat federal administrative agencies. Deference after the
fashion of Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council,
Inc., 467 U. S. 837 . . . (1984), depends on delegation. See Adams Fruit
Co. v. Barrett, 494 U. S. 638 . . . (1990). Congress did not delegate either
interpretive or executive power to the state courts. They exercise pow-
ers under their domestic law, constrained by the Constitution of the United
‘Deference’ to the jurisdictions bound by those constraints is not
States.
sensible.” Lindh v. Murphy, 96 F. 3d 856, 868 (CA7 1996) (en banc), rev’d
on other grounds, 521 U. S. 320 (1997).

14 The Court advances three reasons for adopting its alternative con-
struction of the phrase “unreasonable application of.” First, the use of
the word “unreasonable” in the statute suggests that Congress was di-
rectly inﬂuenced by the “patently unreasonable” standard advocated by
Justice Thomas in his opinion in Wright v. West, 505 U. S. 277, 287 (1992),
post, at 411–412; second, the legislative history supports this view, see
post, at 408, n.; and third, Congress must have intended to change the law
more substantially than our reading of 28 U. S. C. § 2254(d)(1) (1994 ed.,
Supp. III) permits.

None of these reasons is persuasive. First, even though, as the Court
recognizes, the term “unreasonable” is “difﬁcult to deﬁne,” post, at 410,
neither the statute itself nor the Court’s explanation of it suggests that