Cite as: 506 U. S. 364 (1993)
O'Connor, J., concurring
terpretations of existing precedents made by state courts even though they are shown to be contrary to later decisions." Butler v. McKellar, 494 U. S. 407, 414 (1990).
A federal habeas petitioner has no interest in the finality of the state-court judgment under which he is incarcerated: Indeed, the very purpose of his habeas petition is to overturn that judgment. Nor does such a petitioner ordinarily have any claim of reliance on past judicial precedent as a basis for his actions that corresponds to the State's interest described in the quotation from Butler, supra. The result of these differences is that the State will benefit from our Teague decision in some federal habeas cases, while the habeas petitioner will not. This result is not, as the dissent would have it, a "windfall" for the State, but instead is a perfectly logical limitation of Teague to the circumstances which gave rise to it. Cessante ratione legis, cessat et ipsa lex.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is
Reversed.
Justice O'Connor, concurring.
I join the Court's opinion and concur in its judgment. I write separately only to point out that today's decision will, in the vast majority of cases, have no effect on the prejudice inquiry under Strickland v. Washington, 466 U. S. 668 (1984). The determinative question—whether there is "a reasonable probability that, but for counsel's unprofessional errors, the result of the proceeding would have been different," id., at 694—remains unchanged. This case, however, concerns the unusual circumstance where the defendant attempts to demonstrate prejudice based on considerations that, as a matter of law, ought not inform the inquiry. As we explained in Strickland, certain factors, real though they may be, simply cannot be taken into account:
"An assessment of the likelihood of a result more favorable to the defendant must exclude the possibility of arbitrariness, whimsy, caprice, 'nullification,' and the like.
373
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