Cite as: 528 U. S. 259 (2000)
Opinion of the Court
Amendment will tolerate. Upon that question, I am constrained to join the opinion and judgment of the Court." 385 U. S., at 569.
We have continued to reiterate this principle in recent years. See Finley, 481 U. S., at 559 (refusing to accept the premise that "when a State chooses to offer help to those seeking relief from convictions, the Federal Constitution dictates the exact form such assistance must assume"); ibid. (explaining that States have "substantial discretion to develop and implement programs to aid prisoners seeking to secure post-conviction review"); Murray v. Giarratano, 492 U. S. 1, 13 (1989) (O'Connor, J., concurring) ("[N]or does it seem to me that the Constitution requires the States to follow any particular federal model in [postconviction] proceedings. . . . States [have] considerable discretion"); id., at 14 (Kennedy, J., concurring in judgment) ("[J]udicial imposition of a categorical remedy . . . might pretermit other responsible solutions being considered in Congress and state legislatures"). Although Finley and Murray involved postconviction proceedings (in which there is no constitutional right to counsel) rather than direct appeal, we think, as the language of Griffin suggests, that the principle is the same in both contexts. For in Griffin, as here, there was an underlying constitutional right at issue.
In short, it is more in keeping with our status as a court, and particularly with our status as a court in a federal system, to avoid imposing a single solution on the States from the top down. We should, and do, evaluate state procedures one at a time, as they come before us, see Murray, supra, at 14, while leaving "the more challenging task of crafting appropriate procedures . . . to the laboratory of the States in the first instance," Cruzan v. Director, Mo. Dept. of Health, 497 U. S. 261, 292 (1990) (O'Connor, J., concurring) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). We will not cavalierly "imped[e] the States' ability to serve as laboratories for testing solutions to novel legal problems." Arizona v.
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