410
Opinion of the Court
should not transform the inquiry into a subjective one by resting its determination instead on the simple fact that at least one of the Nation's jurists has applied the relevant federal law in the same manner the state court did in the habeas petitioner's case. The "all reasonable jurists" standard would tend to mislead federal habeas courts by focusing their attention on a subjective inquiry rather than on an objective one. For example, the Fifth Circuit appears to have applied its "reasonable jurist" standard in just such a subjective manner. See Drinkard v. Johnson, 97 F. 3d 751, 769 (1996) (holding that state court's application of federal law was not unreasonable because the Fifth Circuit panel split 2-1 on the underlying mixed constitutional question), cert. denied, 520 U. S. 1107 (1997). As I explained in Wright with respect to the "reasonable jurist" standard in the Teague context, "[e]ven though we have characterized the new rule inquiry as whether 'reasonable jurists' could disagree as to whether a result is dictated by precedent, the standard for determining when a case establishes a new rule is 'objective,' and the mere existence of conflicting authority does not necessarily mean a rule is new." 505 U. S., at 304 (citation omitted).
The term "unreasonable" is no doubt difficult to define. That said, it is a common term in the legal world and, accordingly, federal judges are familiar with its meaning. For purposes of today's opinion, the most important point is that an unreasonable application of federal law is different from an incorrect application of federal law. Our opinions in Wright, for example, make that difference clear. Justice Thomas' criticism of this Court's subsequent reliance on Brown turned on that distinction. The Court in Brown, Justice Thomas contended, held only that a federal habeas court must determine whether the relevant state-court adjudication resulted in a " 'satisfactory conclusion.' " 505 U. S., at 287 (quoting Brown, 344 U. S., at 463). In Justice Thomas' view, Brown did not answer "the question whether a 'satis-factory' conclusion was one that the habeas court considered
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