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Opinion of Scalia, J.
The underlying theme of the Court's opinion is that taking the element of materiality from the jury did not render Neder's trial unfair, because the judge certainly reached the "right" result. But the same could be said of a directed verdict against the defendant—which would be per se reversible no matter how overwhelming the unfavorable evidence. See Rose v. Clark, supra, at 578. The very premise of structural-error review is that even convictions reflecting the "right" result are reversed for the sake of protecting a basic right. For example, in Tumey v. Ohio, 273 U. S. 510 (1927), where we reversed the defendant's conviction because he had been tried before a biased judge, the State argued that "the evidence shows clearly that the defendant was guilty and that he was only fined $100, which was the minimum amount, and therefore that he can not complain of a lack of due process, either in his conviction or in the amount of the judgment." Id., at 535. We rejected this argument out of hand, responding that "[n]o matter what the evidence was against him, he had the right to have an impartial judge." Ibid. (emphasis added). The amount of evidence against a defendant who has properly preserved his objection, while relevant to determining whether a given error was harmless, has nothing to do with determining whether the error is subject to harmless-error review in the first place.
The Court points out that in Johnson v. United States, 520 U. S. 461 (1997), we affirmed the petitioner's conviction even though the element of materiality had been withheld from the jury. But the defendant in that case, unlike the defendant here, had not requested a materiality instruction. In the context of such unobjected-to error, the mere deprivation of substantial rights "does not, without more," warrant reversal, United States v. Olano, 507 U. S. 725, 737 (1993), but the appellant must also show that the deprivation "seriously affect[s] the fairness, integrity or public reputation of judicial proceedings," Johnson, supra, at 469 (quoting Olano, supra,
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