488
Opinion of the Court
Respondents had urged us to adopt a rule that was in one respect broader than this: Exhaustion of state remedies should be required, they contended, not just when success in the § 1983 damages suit would necessarily show a conviction or sentence to be unlawful, but whenever "judgment in a § 1983 action would resolve a necessary element to a likely challenge to a conviction, even if the § 1983 court [need] not determine that the conviction is invalid." Brief for Respondents 26, n. 10. Such a broad sweep was needed, respondents contended, lest a judgment in a prisoner's favor in a federal-court § 1983 damages action claiming, for example, a Fourth Amendment violation, be given preclusive effect as to that subissue in a subsequent state-court post-conviction proceeding. Preclusion might result, they asserted, if the State exercised sufficient control over the officials' defense in the § 1983 action. See Montana v. United States, 440 U. S. 147, 154 (1979). While we have no occasion to rule on the matter at this time, it is at least plain that preclusion will not necessarily be an automatic, or even a permissible, effect.9
state-court proceedings. See Colorado River Water Conservation Dist. v. United States, 424 U. S. 800 (1976).
Moreover, we do not decide whether abstention might be appropriate in
cases where a state prisoner brings a § 1983 damages suit raising an issue that also could be grounds for relief in a state-court challenge to his conviction or sentence. Cf. Tower v. Glover, 467 U. S. 914, 923 (1984).
9 State courts are bound to apply federal rules in determining the preclusive effect of federal-court decisions on issues of federal law. See P. Bator, D. Meltzer, P. Mishkin, & D. Shapiro, Hart and Wechsler's The Federal Courts and the Federal System 1604 (3d ed. 1988) ("It is clear that where the federal court decided a federal question, federal res judicata rules govern"); Deposit Bank v. Frankfort, 191 U. S. 499, 514-518 (1903); Stoll v. Gottlieb, 305 U. S. 165, 170-171, 174-175 (1938). The federal rules on the subject of issue and claim preclusion, unlike those relating to exhaustion of state remedies, are "almost entirely judge-made." Hart & Wechsler's, supra, at 1598; see also Burbank, Interjurisdictional Preclusion, Full Faith and Credit and Federal Common Law: A General Approach, 71 Cornell L. Rev. 733, 747-778 (1986). And in developing
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