306
Kennedy, J., concurring in judgment
and fact would be a substantial change in our construction of the authority conferred by the habeas corpus statute. As Justice Thomas acknowledges, to change the standard of review would indeed be "far-reaching," ante, at 295, and we need not decide whether to do so in order to resolve this case.
Justice Kennedy, concurring in the judgment.
I do not enter the debate about the reasons that took us to the point where mixed constitutional questions are subject to de novo review in federal habeas corpus proceedings. Whatever the answer to that difficult historical inquiry, all agree that, at least prior to the Court's adoption of the retroactivity analysis of Teague v. Lane, 489 U. S. 288 (1989), see Penry v. Lynaugh, 492 U. S. 302, 313-314 (1989), the matter was settled. It seems that the real issue dividing my colleagues is whether the retroactivity analysis of Teague casts doubt upon the rule of Miller v. Fenton, 474 U. S. 104, 112 (1985). Even petitioner State of Virginia and the United States as amicus curiae, both seeking a deferential standard with respect to mixed questions, recognize that this is how the standard of review question arises. See Brief for Petitioners 11 ("The notion that a state prisoner has a right to de novo federal collateral review of his constitutional claims . . . surely has not survived this Court's decisions in Teague" and its progeny); Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 12 ("Prior to the rule established by Teague [and later cases applying Teague], this Court often treated mixed questions of law and fact as subject to independent review in federal habeas corpus").
If vindication of the principles underlying Teague did require that state-court rulings on mixed questions must be given deference in a federal habeas proceeding, then indeed it might be said that the Teague line of cases is on a collision course with the Miller v. Fenton line. And in the proper case we would have to select one at the expense of the other. But in my view neither the purpose for which Teague was
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