Cite as: 529 U. S. 362 (2000)
Opinion of the Court
such "extension of legal principle" cases should be treated under § 2254(d)(1). For now it is sufficient to hold that when a state-court decision unreasonably applies the law of this Court to the facts of a prisoner's case, a federal court applying § 2254(d)(1) may conclude that the state-court decision falls within that provision's "unreasonable application" clause.
B
There remains the task of defining what exactly qualifies as an "unreasonable application" of law under § 2254(d)(1). The Fourth Circuit held in Green that a state-court decision involves an "unreasonable application of . . . clearly established Federal law" only if the state court has applied federal law "in a manner that reasonable jurists would all agree is unreasonable." 143 F. 3d, at 870. The placement of this additional overlay on the "unreasonable application" clause was erroneous. It is difficult to fault the Fourth Circuit for using this language given the fact that we have employed nearly identical terminology to describe the related inquiry undertaken by federal courts in applying the nonretroactivity rule of Teague. For example, in Lambrix v. Singletary, 520 U. S. 518 (1997), we stated that a new rule is not dictated by precedent unless it would be "apparent to all reasonable jurists." Id., at 528 (emphasis added). In Graham v. Collins, 506 U. S. 461 (1993), another nonretroactivity case, we employed similar language, stating that we could not say "that all reasonable jurists would have deemed themselves compelled to accept Graham's claim in 1984." Id., at 477 (emphasis added).
Defining an "unreasonable application" by reference to a "reasonable jurist," however, is of little assistance to the courts that must apply § 2254(d)(1) and, in fact, may be misleading. Stated simply, a federal habeas court making the "unreasonable application" inquiry should ask whether the state court's application of clearly established federal law was objectively unreasonable. The federal habeas court
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