Cite as: 507 U. S. 680 (1993)
Opinion of Scalia, J.
prisoner in court, the standard applied to determine whether relief would be accorded was equitable: The court was to "determine whether the case of [the prisoner's] commitment be just, and thereupon do as to justice shall appertain." 1 id., at 131.
This Court has frequently rested its habeas decisions on equitable principles. In one of the earliest federal habeas cases, Ex parte Watkins, 3 Pet. 193, 201 (1830), Chief Justice Marshall wrote: "No doubt exists respecting the power [of the Court to issue the writ]; the question is, whether this be a case in which it ought to be exercised." And in Ex parte Royall, the Court, while affirming that a federal habeas court had "the power" to discharge a state prisoner awaiting trial, held that it was "not bound in every case to exercise such a power." 117 U. S., at 251. The federal habeas statute did "not deprive the court of discretion," which "should be exercised in the light of the relations existing, under our system of government, between the judicial tribunals of the Union and of the States." Ibid.
This doctrine continues to be reflected in our modern cases. In declining to extend habeas relief to all cases of state procedural default, the Court in Fay v. Noia said: "Discretion is implicit in the statutory command that the judge . . . 'dispose of the matter as law and justice require,' 28 U. S. C. § 2243; and discretion was the flexible concept employed by the federal courts in developing the exhaustion rule." 372 U. S., at 438. See also Wainwright v. Sykes, supra, at 88. In fashioning this Court's retroactivity doctrine, the plurality in Teague v. Lane, 489 U. S. 288, 308-310 (1989), also relied on equitable considerations. And in a case announced today, holding that the harmless-error standard for habeas corpus is less onerous than the one for direct review, the Court carries on this tradition by expressly considering equitable principles such as "finality," "comity," and "federalism." Brecht v. Abrahamson, ante, at 635-636.
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