Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 464

529US2

Unit: $U46

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

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

389

Opinion of Stevens, J.

Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary 285 (1983).
In this sense,
we think the phrase surely capacious enough to include a
ﬁnding that the state-court “decision” is simply “erroneous”
or wrong.
(We hasten to add that even “diametrically dif-
ferent” from, or “opposite” to, an established federal law
would seem to include “decisions” that are wrong in light of
that law.) And there is nothing in the phrase “contrary
to”—as the Court appears to agree—that implies anything
less than independent review by the federal courts. More-
over, state-court decisions that do not “conﬂict” with federal
law will rarely be “unreasonable” under either the Court’s
reading of the statute or ours. We all agree that state-court
judgments must be upheld unless, after the closest examina-
tion of the state-court judgment, a federal court is ﬁrmly
convinced that a federal constitutional right has been vio-
lated. Our difference is as to the cases in which, at ﬁrst
blush, a state-court judgment seems entirely reasonable, but
thorough analysis by a federal court produces a ﬁrm convic-
tion that that judgment is infected by constitutional error.
In our view, such an erroneous judgment is “unreasonable”
within the meaning of the Act even though that conclusion
was not immediately apparent.

In sum, the statute directs federal courts to attend to
every state-court judgment with utmost care, but it does not
require them to defer to the opinion of every reasonable
state-court judge on the content of federal law.
If, after
carefully weighing all the reasons for accepting a state
court’s judgment, a federal court is convinced that a prison-
er’s custody—or, as in this case, his sentence of death—vio-
lates the Constitution, that independent judgment should
prevail. Otherwise the federal “law as determined by the
Supreme Court of the United States” might be applied by
the federal courts one way in Virginia and another way in
California.
In light of the well-recognized interest in ensur-
ing that federal courts interpret federal law in a uniform