Cite as: 509 U. S. 86 (1993)
Opinion of the Court
and effect" of the new rule. Chevron Oil Co. v. Huson, 404 U. S., at 106-107 (quoting Cipriano v. City of Houma, 395 U. S. 701, 706 (1969)).9
We subsequently overruled Linkletter in Griffith v. Kentucky, 479 U. S. 314 (1987), and eliminated limits on retroactivity in the criminal context by holding that all "newly declared . . . rule[s]" must be applied retroactively to all "criminal cases pending on direct review." Id., at 322. This holding rested on two "basic norms of constitutional adjudication." Ibid. First, we reasoned that "the nature of judicial review" strips us of the quintessentially "legislat[ive]" prerogative to make rules of law retroactive or prospective as we see fit. Ibid. Second, we concluded that "selective application of new rules violates the principle of treating similarly situated [parties] the same." Id., at 323.
Dicta in Griffith, however, stated that "civil retroactivity . . . . continue[d] to be governed by the standard announced in Chevron Oil." Id., at 322, n. 8. We divided over the meaning of this dicta in American Trucking Assns., Inc. v. Smith, 496 U. S. 167 (1990). The four Justices in the plurality used "the Chevron Oil test" to consider whether to confine "the application of [American Trucking Assns., Inc. v. Scheiner, 483 U. S. 266 (1987),] to taxation of highway use prior to June 23, 1987, the date we decided Scheiner." Id.,
9 We need not debate whether Chevron Oil represents a true "choice-oflaw principle" or merely "a remedial principle for the exercise of equitable discretion by federal courts." American Trucking Assns., Inc. v. Smith, 496 U. S. 167, 220 (1990) (Stevens, J., dissenting). Compare id., at 191- 197 (plurality opinion) (treating Chevron Oil as a choice-of-law rule), with id., at 218-224 (Stevens, J., dissenting) (treating Chevron Oil as a remedial doctrine). Regardless of how Chevron Oil is characterized, our decision today makes it clear that "the Chevron Oil test cannot determine the choice of law by relying on the equities of the particular case" and that the federal law applicable to a particular case does not turn on "whether [litigants] actually relied on [an] old rule [or] how they would suffer from retroactive application" of a new one. James B. Beam Distilling Co. v. Georgia, 501 U. S. 529, 543 (1991) (opinion of Souter, J.).
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