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when aware of reasonable contrary conclusions reached by other courts." Butler v. McKellar, 494 U. S. 407, 415 (1990).
In Butler, we determined that the rule announced in Arizona v. Roberson, 486 U. S. 675 (1988), was "new" for purposes of Teague v. Lane, 489 U. S. 288 (1989), despite Roberson's repeated assertions that its rule was "directly controlled" by precedent. Indeed, we did not even feel bound by the opinion's statement that it was not announcing a new rule at all but rather declining to create an exception to an existing rule. While Teague and its progeny may not provide the appropriate standard of novelty for Chevron Oil purposes, their teaching—that whether an opinion is new depends not on its language or tone but on the legal landscape from which it arose—obtains nonetheless.
In any event, Justice Stevens certainly thought that Davis announced a new rule. In fact, he thought that the rule was not only unprecedented, but wrong: "The Court's holding is not supported by the rationale for the intergovern-mental immunity doctrine and is not compelled by our previous decisions. I cannot join the unjustified, court-imposed restriction on a State's power to administer its own affairs." 489 U. S., at 818-819 (dissenting opinion). And just last Term two Members of this Court expressed their disagreement with the decision in Davis, labeling its application of the doctrine of intergovernmental immunity "perverse." Barker v. Kansas, 503 U. S. 594, 606 (1992) (Stevens, J., joined by Thomas, J., concurring). Although I would not call our decision in Davis perverse, I agree that its rule was sufficiently debatable in advance as to fall short of being "clearly foreshadowed." The great weight of authority is in accord.*
*Swanson v. Powers, 937 F. 2d 965, 968, 970, 971 (CA4 1991) ("The most pertinent judicial decisions" were contrary to a holding of immunity and "the rationale behind the precedent might have suggested a different re-
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