754
Opinion of the Court
nounced it). If Harper has anything more than symbolic significance, how could virtually identical reliance, without more, prove sufficient to permit a virtually identical denial simply because it is characterized as a denial based on "remedy" rather than "nonretroactivity"?
Hyde tries to answer this question by pointing to other cases in which, she claims, this Court has allowed state courts effectively to avoid retroactive application of federal law by denying a particular remedy for violation of that law or by refusing to provide any remedy at all. She argues that these cases are similar enough to her own to permit a "remedial" exception to the retroactive application of Bendix. We have examined the cases to which Hyde looks for support, and conclude that they all involve very different circumstances.
First, Hyde points to a statement in the opinion announcing the Court's judgment in James B. Beam Distilling Co. v. Georgia, 501 U. S. 529 (1991), that once "a rule is found to apply 'backward,' there may then be a further issue of remedies, i. e., whether the party prevailing under a new rule should obtain the same relief that would have been awarded if the rule had been an old one." Id., at 535 (opinion of Souter, J.); ibid. ("Subject to possible constitutional thresholds, . . . the remedial inquiry is one governed by state law, at least where the case originates in state court"); American Trucking Assns., Inc. v. Smith, 496 U. S., at 178 (opinion of O'Connor, J.) (speaking of the need to "distinguish the question of retroactivity . . . from the distinct remedial question"); id., at 210 (Stevens, J., dissenting) (distinguishing "between retroactivity as a choice-of-law rule and retroactivity as a remedial principle"). This language, however, read both literally and in context, makes clear that the ordinary application of a new rule of law "backwards," say, to pending cases, may or may not, involve a further matter of remedies. Whether it does so, and, if so, what kind of remedy the state court may fashion, depend—like almost all legal issues—
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