104
Scalia, J., concurring
Finally, the plurality opinion in Teague justified the departure from Linkletter by implicitly relying on the well-settled proposition that stare decisis has less force where intervening decisions "have removed or weakened the conceptual underpinnings from the prior decision." Patterson v. McLean Credit Union, 491 U. S. 164, 173 (1989). Justice O'Connor endorsed the reasoning expressed by Justice Harlan in his separate opinions in Mackey v. United States, 401 U. S. 667 (1971), and Desist v. United States, 394 U. S. 244 (1969), and noted that the Court had already adopted the first part of Justice Harlan's retroactivity views in Griffith v. Kentucky, 479 U. S. 314 (1987). See Teague, supra, at 303-305. Again, this argument equally—indeed, even more forcefully—supports reconsideration of Chevron Oil. Griffith returned this Court, in criminal cases, to the traditional view (which I shall discuss at greater length below) that prospective decisionmaking "violates basic norms of constitutional adjudication." Griffith, supra, at 322. One of the conceptual underpinnings of Chevron Oil was that retroactivity presents a similar problem in both civil and criminal contexts. See Chevron Oil, supra, at 106; see also Beytagh, supra, at 1606. Thus, after Griffith, Chevron Oil can be adhered to only by rejecting the reasoning of Chevron Oil— that is, only by asserting that the issue of retroactivity is different in the civil and criminal settings. That is a particularly difficult proof to make, inasmuch as Griffith rested on "basic norms of constitutional adjudication" and "the nature of judicial review." 479 U. S., at 322; see also Teague, supra, at 317 (White, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment) (Griffith "appear[s] to have constitutional underpinnings").1
1 The dissent attempts to distinguish between retroactivity in civil and criminal settings on three grounds, none of which has ever been adopted by this Court. The dissent's first argument begins with the observation that "nonretroactivity in criminal cases historically has favored the government's reliance interests over the rights of criminal defend-
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