Cite as: 524 U. S. 236 (1998)
Scalia, J., dissenting
the vitality" of the holdings. Ante, at 252. The confusion that will be introduced by this new approach is obvious.
At bottom, the only justification for the Court's holding— and the only one that prompts the concurrence to overrule House—is convenience: it "permits us to carry out our normal function" of appellate review. Ante, at 251. Our "normal" function of appellate review, however, is no more and no less than what Congress says it is. U. S. Const., Art. III, § 2. The Court's defiance of the scheme created by Congress in evident reliance on our precedent is a display not of "common sense," ante, at 250, but of judicial willfulness. And a doctrine of stare decisis that is suspended when five Justices find it inconvenient (or indeed, as the concurrence suggests, even four Justices in search of a fifth) is no doctrine at all, but simply an excuse for adhering to cases we like and abandoning those we do not.
II
Since I find no jurisdiction under § 1254(1), I must address the Government's further argument that we can issue a common-law writ of certiorari under the All Writs Act, 28 U. S. C. § 1651. The All Writs Act provides that "[t]he Supreme Court . . . may issue all writs necessary or appropriate in aid of [its] jurisdictio[n] and agreeable to the usages and principles of law." As expressly noted in this Court's Rule 20.1, issuance of a writ under § 1651 "is not a matter of right, but of discretion sparingly exercised," and "[t]o justify the granting of any such writ, the petition must show that the writ will be in aid of the Court's appellate jurisdiction, that exceptional circumstances warrant the exercise of the Court's discretionary powers, and that adequate relief cannot be obtained in any other form or from any other court."
Petitioner (who filed a petition for a writ of certiorari under § 1254(1), not under the All Writs Act, Pet. for Cert. 1) has failed to establish that he meets these requirements. To begin with, he has not shown that adequate relief is unobtainable in any form or from any other court. AEDPA dif-
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