694
Opinion of the Court
lished Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States." 2
As we stated in Williams, § 2254(d)(1)'s "contrary to" and "unreasonable application" clauses have independent meaning. 529 U. S., at 404-405. A federal habeas court may issue the writ under the "contrary to" clause if the state court applies a rule different from the governing law set forth in our cases, or if it decides a case differently than we have done on a set of materially indistinguishable facts. Id., at 405-406. The court may grant relief under the "unreasonable application" clause if the state court correctly identifies the governing legal principle from our decisions but unreasonably applies it to the facts of the particular case. Id., at 407-408. The focus of the latter inquiry is on whether the state court's application of clearly established federal law is objectively unreasonable, and we stressed in Williams that an unreasonable application is different from an incorrect one. Id., at 409-410. See also id., at 411 (a federal habeas court may not issue a writ under the unreasonable application clause "simply because that court concludes in its independent judgment that the relevant state-court decision applied clearly established federal law erroneously or incorrectly").
Petitioner contends that the Court of Appeals exceeded its statutory authority to grant relief under § 2254(d)(1) because the decision of the Tennessee courts was neither contrary to nor an unreasonable application of the clearly established law of Strickland. Respondent counters that he is entitled to relief under § 2254(d)(1)'s "contrary to" clause because the state court applied the wrong legal rule. In his view, Cronic, not Strickland, governs the analysis of his claim that
2 Justice Stevens' dissent does not cite this statutory provision governing respondent's ability to obtain federal habeas relief, much less explain how his claim meets its standards.
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