Cite as: 523 U. S. 538 (1998)
Souter, J., dissenting
not the issue here. The issue on abuse-of-discretion review is simply whether those voting to recall the mandate to allow en banc review could reasonably have thought the earlier panel had been mistaken, and the conclusions of the District Court suffice to answer yes to that question. See Thompson v. Calderon, Civ. No. 89-3630-RG (CD Cal., Mar. 29, 1995), reprinted at App. 14-16. The ultimate merit of either court's answer to the underlying question is not the touch-stone of abuse-of-discretion review, see National Hockey League, 427 U. S., at 642 (under abuse-of-discretion review, the relevant question is not whether the reviewing court would have reached the same result), and here we review only for abuse, not the merits of the underlying case (the question whether prejudice should be found on the record of this case not warranting review).2
The majority, of course, adhere to the terminology of abuse of discretion in reversing the Ninth Circuit. But it is abuse of discretion "informed by" the 1996 amendments to the habeas corpus statute enacted by certain provisions of AEDPA, Pub. L. 104-132, 110 Stat. 1217, ante, at 558; see Felker v. Turpin, 518 U. S. 651 (1996), and as so informed the abuse-of-discretion standard is beyond recognition. That aside, the Court's reformulation is as unwarranted on the Court's own terms as it is by the terms of AEDPA.
2 Abuse-of-discretion review of the likelihood of a miscarriage of justice is analogous to the abuse-of-discretion review of Rule 11 sanctions for frivolous filings. In that context, we held that reviewing courts should defer to district courts' conclusions about substantial legal justification. Cooter & Gell v. Hartmarx Corp., 496 U. S. 384, 401-405 (1990). In the present circumstances, where the subject of our review for an abuse of discretion is an appellate court's conclusion that a threatened miscarriage of justice is sufficient to justify recalling the mandate, I believe that we similarly must give some deference to the Court of Appeals's preliminary analysis that there may have been a misapplication of a legal standard, even though we would not defer to it if we were addressing the ultimate question on the merits, whether a trial court had committed legal error.
571
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