Cite as: 507 U. S. 680 (1993)
Opinion of Scalia, J.
ture of our national system. That structure establishes this Court as the supreme judicial interpreter of the Federal Constitution and laws, but gives other federal courts no higher or more respected a role than state courts in applying that "Law of the Land"—which it says all state courts are bound by, and all state judges must be sworn to uphold. U. S. Const., Art. VI. See Robb v. Connolly, 111 U. S. 624, 637 (1884); Ex parte Royall, supra, at 251; Brown, 344 U. S., at 499 (opinion of Frankfurter, J.). It would be a strange constitution that regards state courts as second-rate instruments for the vindication of federal rights and yet makes no mandatory provision for lower federal courts (as our Constitution does not). And it would be an unworkable constitution that requires redetermination in federal courts of all issues of pervasive federal constitutional law that arise in state-court litigation.
Absent indication to the contrary, state courts should be presumed to have applied federal law as faithfully as federal courts. See Ex parte Royall, supra, at 252; Brecht v. Abrahamson, ante, at 636. A federal court entertaining collateral attack against a state criminal conviction should accord the same measure of respect and finality as it would to a federal criminal conviction. As it exercises equitable discretion to determine whether the merits of constitutional claims will be reached in the one, it should exercise a similar discretion for the other. The distinction that has arisen in lower court practice is unsupported in law, utterly impractical and demeaning to the States in its consequences, and must be eliminated.
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While I concur in Part III of the Court's opinion, I cannot agree with the rest of its analysis. I would reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals and remand the case for a determination whether, given that respondent has already been afforded an opportunity for full and fair litigation in the
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