Cite as: 523 U. S. 538 (1998)
Souter, J., dissenting
The Court of Appeals accordingly refrained from acting on the merits until after the state courts had adjudicated a fourth state postconviction claim, the Governor of California had undertaken a comprehensive review of the case and had denied clemency, and the State had scheduled respondent's execution. As a consequence, the concern for comity that motivated the court came to look like hope that a state decisionmaker would somehow obviate the federal court's need to advertise its own mistakes and take corrective action.
But as unfortunate as the Court of Appeals's timing may have been, that is not the ground on which the majority reverses the judgment entered on the en banc rehearing. In rejecting the conclusion of the en banc court, the Court applies a new and erroneous standard to review the recall of the mandate, and I respectfully dissent from its mistaken conclusion.
Like the majority, I begin with the longstanding view that a court's authority to recall a mandate in order to correct error is inherent in the judicial power, ante, at 549-550 (citing Hawaii Housing Authority v. Midkiff, 463 U. S. 1323, 1324 (1983) (Rehnquist, J., in chambers); Hazel-Atlas Glass Co. v. Hartford-Empire Co., 322 U. S. 238, 249-250 (1944)), and subject to review only for abuse of discretion, ante, at 549. Although we have had no occasion to discuss the abuse standard as applied to actions of a court of appeals as distinct from those of a trial court, there is no reason to suppose the criterion should be affected merely because it is an appellate court that has exercised the discretionary power to act in the first instance. It is true, of course, that the variety of subjects left to discretionary decision requires caution in synthesizing abuse of discretion cases. See Friendly, Indiscretion About Discretion, 31 Emory L. J. 747, 762-764 (1982); Rosenberg, Judicial Discretion of the Trial Court, Viewed From Above, 22 Syracuse L. Rev. 635, 650-653 (1971). At the least, however, one can say that a high degree of deference to the court exercising discretionary authority is the
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