76
Opinion of the Court
court concludes in its independent judgment that the relevant state-court decision applied clearly established federal law erroneously or incorrectly." Williams v. Taylor, 529 U. S., at 411. Rather, that application must be objectively unreasonable. Id., at 409; Bell v. Cone, supra, at 699; Wood-ford v. Visciotti, 537 U. S. 19, 27 (2002) (per curiam).
Section 2254(d)(1) permits a federal court to grant habeas relief based on the application of a governing legal principle to a set of facts different from those of the case in which the principle was announced. See, e. g., Williams v. Taylor, supra, at 407 (noting that it is "an unreasonable application of this Court's precedent if the state court identifies the correct governing legal rule from this Court's cases but unreasonably applies it to the facts of the particular state prison-er's case"). Here, however, the governing legal principle gives legislatures broad discretion to fashion a sentence that fits within the scope of the proportionality principle—the "precise contours" of which "are unclear." Harmelin v. Michigan, 501 U. S., at 998 (Kennedy, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment). And it was not objectively unreasonable for the California Court of Appeal to conclude that these "contours" permitted an affirmance of Andrade's sentence.
Indeed, since Harmelin, several Members of this Court have expressed "uncertainty" regarding the application of the proportionality principle to the California three strikes law. Riggs v. California, 525 U. S. 1114, 1115 (1999) (Stevens, J., joined by Souter and Ginsburg, JJ., respecting denial of certiorari) ("[T]here is some uncertainty about how our cases dealing with the punishment of recidivists should apply"); see also id., at 1116 ("It is thus unclear how, if at all, a defendant's criminal record beyond the requisite two prior 'strikes' . . . affects the constitutionality of his sentence"); cf. Durden v. California, 531 U. S. 1184 (2001) (Souter, J., joined by Breyer, J., dissenting from denial of certiorari) (arguing that the Court should hear the three strikes gross
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