Cite as: 529 U. S. 362 (2000)
Opinion of O'Connor, J.
See 505 U. S., at 287-290. According to Justice Thomas, the reliance of our precedents on Brown v. Allen, 344 U. S. 443 (1953), was erroneous because the Court in Brown never explored in detail whether a federal habeas court, to deny a state prisoner's application, must conclude that the relevant state-court adjudication was "correct" or merely that it was "reasonable." Wright, supra, at 287. Justice Thomas suggested that the time to revisit our decisions may have been at hand, given that our more recent habeas jurisprudence in the nonretroactivity context, see, e. g., Teague v. Lane, 489 U. S. 288 (1989), had called into question the then-settled rule of independent review of mixed constitutional questions. Wright, 505 U. S., at 291-292, 294.
I wrote separately in Wright because I believed Justice Thomas had "understate[d] the certainty with which Brown v. Allen rejected a deferential standard of review of issues of law." Id., at 300. I also explained that we had considered the standard of review applicable to mixed constitutional questions on numerous occasions and each time we concluded that federal habeas courts had a duty to evaluate such questions independently. Id., at 301-303. With respect to Justice Thomas' suggestion that Teague and its progeny called into question the vitality of the independent-review rule, I noted that "Teague did not establish a 'deferential' standard of review" because "[i]t did not establish a standard of review at all." 505 U. S., at 303-304. While Teague did hold that state prisoners could not receive "the retroactive benefit of new rules of law," it "did not create any deferential standard of review with regard to old rules." 505 U. S., at 304 (emphasis in original).
Finally, and perhaps most importantly for purposes of today's case, I stated my disagreement with Justice Thomas' suggestion that de novo review is incompatible with the maxim that federal habeas courts should "give great weight to the considered conclusions of a coequal state judiciary," Miller, supra, at 112. Our statement in Miller signified
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