Cite as: 512 U. S. 339 (1994)
Blackmun, J., dissenting
tion of federal law and of mixed questions of federal law and fact are entitled to de novo review by federal habeas court).5 Even if we recognize valid reasons for limiting this review to claims of serious or substantial error, where no federal court previously has addressed the § 2254 petitioner's federal claims, there is less reason to sift these claims through so fine a screen as Hill and Timmreck provide.
Similarly, prudential justifications for Hill's "fundamental error" standard may differ from state to federal proceedings. In a federal trial and appeal, virtually any procedural error, however minor, will violate a "law" of the United States. In this context, it is both impracticable and unnecessary to allow collateral review of all claims of error, particularly since the defendant has had the opportunity both to raise them in and to appeal them to a federal forum. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the Hill-Timmreck screening device, which sorts the substantial errors from the mere technical violations, was developed in § 2255. A state trial, by contrast, implicates few federal laws outside the Constitution. On the extraordinary occasions when Congress does consider a federal law to be so important as to warrant its application in state proceedings, this alone counsels an approach other
5 Justice Scalia proposes to foreclose § 2254 review of federal nonconstitutional claims where the state prisoner was afforded a full and fair opportunity to litigate those claims in state court. This proposal fails for obvious reasons. To hold that full and fair litigation in state courts is a substitute for a federal forum would be, to borrow a phrase, to "suc[k] the life out of [§ 2254]." See ante, at 357 (concurring opinion). At the heart of § 2254 is federal court review of state court decisions on federal law. With one notable exception, see Stone v. Powell, 428 U. S. 465, 486-496 (1976), this Court uniformly has rejected a "full and fair opportunity to litigate" as a bar to § 2254 review. See Withrow v. Williams, supra; Kimmelman v. Morrison, 477 U. S. 365 (1986); Rose v. Mitchell, 443 U. S. 545 (1979); Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U. S. 307 (1979); see also Wright v. West, 505 U. S. 277, 299 (1992) (O'Connor, J., concurring in judgment) (disputing that a "full and fair hearing in the state courts" required deferential review in habeas).
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