Cite as: 523 U. S. 614 (1998)
Opinion of Stevens, J.
Justice Stevens, concurring in part and dissenting in part.
While I agree with the Court's central holding and with its conclusion that none of its judge-made rules foreclose petitioner's collateral attack on his conviction under 18 U. S. C. § 924(c), I believe there is a flaw in its analysis that will affect the proceedings on remand. Given the fact that the record now establishes that the plea of guilty to the § 924(c) charge was constitutionally invalid, petitioner remains presumptively innocent of that offense. Accordingly, unless he again pleads guilty, the burden is on the Government to prove his unlawful use of a firearm.
I
This case does not raise any question concerning the possible retroactive application of a new rule of law, cf. Teague v. Lane, 489 U. S. 288 (1989), because our decision in Bailey v. United States, 516 U. S. 137 (1995), did not change the law. It merely explained what § 924(c) had meant ever since the statute was enacted. The fact that a number of Courts of Appeals had construed the statute differently is of no greater legal significance than the fact that 42 U. S. C. § 1981 had been consistently misconstrued prior to our decision in Patterson v. McLean Credit Union, 491 U. S. 164 (1989). Our comment on the significance of the pre-Patterson jurisprudence applies equally to the pre-Bailey cases construing § 924(c):
"Patterson did not overrule any prior decision of this Court; rather, it held and therefore established that the prior decisions of the Courts of Appeals which read § 1981 to cover discriminatory contract termination were incorrect. They were not wrong according to some abstract standard of interpretive validity, but by the rules that necessarily govern our hierarchical federal court system. Cf. Brown v. Allen, 344 U. S. 443, 540 (1953)
625
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