Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/20-826_p702.pdf
Page Number: 25.0

Cite as:  596 U. S. ____ (2022) 

21 

Opinion of the Court 

an  opinion  is  not  always  to  be  parsed  as  though  we  were 
dealing with [the] language of a statute.”  Reiter v. Sonotone 
Corp., 442 U. S. 330, 341 (1979).  Yet that is exactly what
Mr. Davenport and the dissent ask of us.  They would have
us override a lawful congressional command—that no fed-
eral habeas relief should issue “unless” AEDPA’s applicable 
conditions are satisfied.  § 2254(d).  And they would have us 
do so on the basis of a handful of sentences extracted from 
decisions that had no reason to pass on the argument Mr. 
Davenport presents today.  We neither expect nor hope that 
our  successors  will  comb  these  pages  for  stray  comments
and stretch them beyond their context—all to justify an out-
come  inconsistent  with  this  Court’s  reasoning  and  judg-
ments and with Congress’s instructions.  Such an exalted 
view of this Court’s every passing remark would turn stare 
decisis  from  a  tool  of judicial  humility  into  one  of  judicial 
hubris. 

IV 

Having concluded that the Sixth Circuit erred by failing 
to apply AEDPA before granting habeas relief, one question 
remains:  Assuming  Mr.  Davenport  can  satisfy  Brecht  as 
the Sixth Circuit held, can he satisfy AEDPA?  The answer 
helps illustrate how the two inquiries are distinct and why 
a  federal  court  must  answer  both  before  overturning  a 
state-court conviction. 

Under the statute’s terms, we assess the reasonableness 
of  the  “last  state-court  adjudication  on  the  merits  of ”  the
petitioner’s claim.  Greene v. Fisher, 565 U. S. 34, 40 (2011).
In this case, that is the decision of the Michigan Court of 
Appeals.  To  be  sure,  after  that  intermediate  court  ruled 
against  Mr.  Davenport  he  sought  discretionary  review  in
the  Michigan  Supreme  Court,  which  denied  his  request.
See 494 Mich., at 875, 832 N. W. 2d, at 390.  But a discre-
tionary denial of leave to appeal does not typically entail an
“adjudication”  of  the  underlying  claim’s  “merits”  under