116
O'Connor, J., dissenting
U. S., at 106-107; Phoenix v. Kolodziejski, 399 U. S. 204, 214 (1970); Cipriano v. City of Houma, 395 U. S. 701, 706 (1969); see also American Trucking Assns., 496 U. S., at 188-200 (plurality opinion) (canvassing the Court's retroactivity jurisprudence); ante, at 110 (Kennedy, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment) (citing cases).
In any event, the question of pure prospectivity is not implicated here. The majority first holds that once a rule has been applied retroactively, the rule must be applied retroactively to all cases thereafter. Ante, at 97. Then it holds that Davis v. Michigan Dept. of Treasury, 489 U. S. 803 (1989), in fact retroactively applied the rule it announced. Ante, at 98-99. Under the majority's approach, that should end the matter: Because the Court applied the rule retroactively in Davis, it must do so here as well. Accordingly, there is no reason for the Court's careless dictum regarding pure prospectivity, much less dictum that is contrary to clear precedent.
Plainly enough, Justice Scalia would cast overboard our entire retroactivity doctrine with precisely the "unceremonious 'heave-ho' " he decries in his concurrence. See ante, at 109. Behind the undisguised hostility to an era whose jurisprudence he finds distasteful, Justice Scalia raises but two substantive arguments, both of which were raised in James B. Beam, 501 U. S., at 549 (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment), and neither of which has been adopted by a majority of this Court. Justice White appropriately responded to those arguments then, see id., at 546 (opinion concurring in judgment), and there is no reason to repeat the responses now. As Justice Frankfurter explained more than 35 years ago:
"We should not indulge in the fiction that the law now announced has always been the law . . . . It is much more conducive to law's self-respect to recognize candidly the considerations that give prospective content to
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