Cite as: 509 U. S. 86 (1993)
O'Connor, J., dissenting
Justice O'Connor, with whom The Chief Justice joins, dissenting.
Today the Court applies a new rule of retroactivity to impose crushing and unnecessary liability on the States, precisely at a time when they can least afford it. Were the Court's decision the product of statutory or constitutional command, I would have no choice but to join it. But nothing in the Constitution or statute requires us to adopt the retroactivity rule the majority now applies. In fact, longstanding precedent requires the opposite result. Because I see no reason to abandon our traditional retroactivity analysis as articulated in Chevron Oil Co. v. Huson, 404 U. S. 97, 106- 107 (1971), and because I believe the Supreme Court of Virginia correctly applied Chevron Oil in this case, I would affirm the judgment below.
I
This Court's retroactivity jurisprudence has become somewhat chaotic in recent years. Three Terms ago, the case of American Trucking Assns., Inc. v. Smith, 496 U. S. 167 (1990), produced three opinions, none of which garnered a majority. One Term later, James B. Beam Distilling Co. v. Georgia, 501 U. S. 529 (1991), yielded five opinions; there, no single writing carried more than three votes. As a result, the Court today finds itself confronted with such disarray that, rather than relying on precedent, it must resort to vote counting: Examining the various opinions in Jim Beam, it discerns six votes for a single proposition that, in its view, controls this case. Ante, at 96-97.
If we had given appropriate weight to the principle of stare decisis in the first place, our retroactivity jurisprudence never would have become so hopelessly muddled. After all, it was not that long ago that the law of retroactivity for civil cases was considered well settled. In Chevron Oil Co., we explained that whether a decision will be nonretroactive depends on whether it announces a new rule, whether prospectivity would undermine the purposes of the
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