466
Opinion of the Court
The Rule is mitigated, however, by Rule 52(b), which allows plain errors affecting substantial rights to be noticed even though there was no objection.
Petitioner argues that she need not fall within the "limited" and "circumscribed" strictures of Olano, because the error she complains of here is "structural," and so is outside Rule 52(b) altogether. But the seriousness of the error claimed does not remove consideration of it from the ambit of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. None of the cases discussing "structural error," upon which petitioner relies, were direct appeals from judgments of conviction in the federal system. Several came from state courts which had considered the claimed error under their own rules. See Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U. S. 335 (1963); Arizona v. Fulminante, 499 U. S. 279 (1991); Sullivan v. Louisiana, 508 U. S. 275 (1993). Others came here by way of federal habeas challenges to state convictions. See Vasquez v. Hillery, 474 U. S. 254 (1986); McKaskle v. Wiggins, 465 U. S. 168 (1984). None of them were subject to the provisions of Rule 52.
But it is that Rule which by its terms governs direct appeals from judgments of conviction in the federal system, and therefore governs this case. We cautioned against any unwarranted expansion of Rule 52(b) in United States v. Young, 470 U. S. 1 (1985), because it "would skew the Rule's 'careful balancing of our need to encourage all trial participants to seek a fair and accurate trial the first time around against our insistence that obvious injustice be promptly redressed,' " id., at 15 (quoting United States v. Frady, 456 U. S. 152, 163 (1982)). Even less appropriate than an unwar-ranted expansion of the Rule would be the creation out of whole cloth of an exception to it, an exception which we have no authority to make. See Carlisle v. United States, 517 U. S. 416, 425-426 (1996).
II
We therefore turn to apply here Rule 52(b) as outlined in Olano. Under that test, before an appellate court can cor-
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