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Page Number: 41

12 

BROWN v. DAVENPORT 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

the  word  “subsumes,”  as  introduced  in  Fry  and  echoed  in 
Ayala,  does  not  really  mean  subsumes—which  is  to  say, 
fully “encompass[es] as” a “component element.”  Merriam-
Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary 1246 (11th ed. 2005).  Ra-
ther,  when  the  greatest  wordsmith  in  modern  Supreme 
Court history used the term to describe the relationship be-
tween  two  legal  tests,  he  really  meant  (“more  precisely” 
meant (!), ante, at 20) that they merely overlapped—so that 
sometimes a person meeting one test necessarily meets the 
other, but then again, sometimes not.  If all this shows “re-
spect  for  past  judgments,”  as  the  majority  declares,  ibid., 
then that phrase too has an unconventional meaning.  What 
Ayala held, adhering to Fry, was that anytime a habeas pe-
titioner  satisfies  Brecht,  he  of  necessity  satisfies 
AEDPA/Chapman.  And because that is so, a habeas court 
need not apply both.  I hate to assign homework to readers
of Supreme Court opinions, but if you don’t know what to 
make of the majority’s and my contrasting descriptions of 
Fry and Ayala: well, just go read them.

just  described, 

The majority departs from those two decisions because it 
disagrees with what they said.  The straightforward basis 
of  Fry  and  Ayala,  as 
is  that  the 
AEDPA/Chapman  test  is  “more  liberal”  than  the  Brecht 
test—i.e., easier for the habeas petitioner to meet.  Fry, 551 
U. S.,  at  120.  (That  is  why,  Fry  explained,  the  Congress
enacting  AEDPA—intent  as  it  was  on  limiting  habeas—
could not have meant to replace Brecht.)  The majority here 
asserts that this view of the two tests is just not true.  Its 
theory  goes:  Whereas  AEDPA  asks  whether  “every  fair-
minded  jurist”  would  find  the  requisite  prejudice,  Brecht 
asks only whether “a federal habeas court itself ” would do 
so.  Ante, at 15 (emphasis in original). 

But that description tells only part of the story—and not
the  most  important  part.    Consider  a  fuller  description  of
what a habeas court addressing the prejudicial effect of an