Cite as: 518 U. S. 343 (1996)
Stevens, J., dissenting
not been adequately pressed below. Cf., e. g., McCleskey v. Zant, 499 U. S. 467, 488-489 (1991); compare ante, at 363- 364, n. 8 (State made boilerplate reservation of rights in each set of objections), with Gray v. Netherland, ante, at 163 ("[I]t is not enough to make a general appeal to a constitutional guarantee as broad as due process to present the 'substance' of such a claim to a state court").
The State's lack of interest in representing its interests is clear not only from the sparse objections in the District Court, but from proceedings both here and in the Court of Appeals. In argument before both courts, counsel for the prisoners have conceded that certain aspects of the consent decree exceeded the necessary relief. See, e. g., 43 F. 3d 1261, 1271 (CA9 1994) (prisoners agree that typewriters are not required); Tr. of Oral Arg. 31 (provisions regarding noise in library are unnecessary). This flexibility further suggests that the State could have sought relief from aspects of the plan through negotiation. Indeed, at oral argument in the Ninth Circuit, the parties for both sides suggested that they were willing to settle the case, and the court deferred submission of the case for 30 days to enable a settlement. "However, before the settlement process had even begun, [the State] declined to mediate." 43 F. 3d, at 1265, n. 1. Notably, this is the only comment made by the appellate court regarding the process that led to the fashioning of the remedy in this case.
A fair reading of the record, therefore, reveals that the State had more than six months within which it could have initiated settlement discussions, presented more ambitious objections to the proposed decree reflecting the concerns it has raised before this Court, or offered up its own plan for the review of the plaintiffs and the Special Master. It took none of these steps. Instead, it settled for piecemeal and belated challenges to the scope of the proposed plan.
The Court implies that the District Court's decision to use the decree entered in Gluth as the starting point for fashion-
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