Cite as: 509 U. S. 86 (1993)
Scalia, J., concurring
I joined the plurality opinion in Teague. Not only did I believe the rule it announced was correct, see Withrow v. Williams, 507 U. S. 680, 717 (1993) (Scalia, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part), but I also believed that abandonment of our prior collateral-review retroactivity rule was fully in accord with the doctrine of stare decisis, which as applied by our Court has never been inflexible. The Teague plurality opinion set forth good reasons for abandoning Link-letter—reasons justifying a similar abandonment of Chevron Oil Co. v. Huson, 404 U. S. 97 (1971). It noted, for example, that Linkletter "ha[d] not led to consistent results," Teague, supra, at 302; but neither has Chevron Oil. Proof that what it means is in the eye of the beholder is provided quite nicely by the separate opinions filed today: Of the four Justices who would still apply Chevron Oil, two find Davis v. Michigan Dept. of Treasury, 489 U. S. 803 (1989), retroactive, see post, at 111 (Kennedy, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment), two find it not retroactive, see post, at 122 (O'Connor, J., dissenting). Second, the Teague plurality opinion noted that Linkletter had been criticized by commentators, Teague, supra, at 303; but the commentary cited in the opinion criticized not just Linkletter, but the Court's retroactivity jurisprudence in general, of which it considered Chevron Oil an integral part, see Beytagh, Ten Years of Non-Retroactivity: A Critique and a Proposal, 61 Va. L. Rev. 1557, 1558, 1581-1582, 1606 (1975). Other commentary, of course, has also regarded the issue of retroactivity as a general problem of jurisprudence. See, e. g., Fallon & Meltzer, New Law, Non-Retroactivity, and Constitutional Remedies, 104 Harv. L. Rev. 1731 (1991); Schaefer, Prospective Rulings: Two Perspectives, 1982 S. Ct. Rev. 1; Schaefer, The Control of "Sunbursts": Techniques of Prospective Overruling, 42 N. Y. U. L. Rev. 631 (1967); Mishkin, Forward: The High Court, The Great Writ, and the Due Process of Time and Law, 79 Harv. L. Rev. 56, 58-72 (1965).
103
Page: Index Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007