136
O'Connor, J., dissenting
require a full, backwards-looking compensatory remedy whenever a governmental official reasonably taxes a citizen under what later turns out to be an unconstitutional statute but not where the officer deprives a citizen of her bodily integrity or her life.
In my view, if the Court is going to restrict authority to temper hardship by holding our decisions nonretroactive through the Chevron Oil factors, it must afford courts the ability to avoid injustice by taking equity into account when formulating the remedy for violations of novel constitutional rules. See Fallon & Meltzer, 104 Harv. L. Rev. 1733 (1991). Surely the Constitution permits this Court to refuse plaintiffs full backwards-looking relief under Chevron Oil; we repeatedly have done so in the past. American Trucking Assns., supra, at 188-200 (canvassing the Court's practice); see also supra, at 115-116, 129. I therefore see no reason why it would not similarly permit state courts reasonably to consider the equities in the exercise of their sound remedial discretion.
IV
In my view, the correct approach to the retroactivity question before us was articulated in Chevron Oil some 22 years ago. By refusing to apply Chevron Oil today, the Court not only permits the imposition of grave and gratuitous hardship on the States and their citizens, but also disregards settled precedents central to the fairness and accuracy of our decisional processes. Nor does the Court cast any light on the nature of the regime that will govern from here on. To the contrary, the Court's unnecessary innuendo concerning pure prospectivity and ill-advised dictum regarding remedial issues introduce still greater uncertainty and disorder into this already chaotic area. Because I cannot agree with the Court's decision or the manifestly unjust results it appears to portend, I respectfully dissent.
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