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Full Opinion
WILLIAMS
v.
TAYLOR, WARDEN
United States Supreme Court.
*363 *364 *365 Stevens, J., announced the judgment of the Court and delivered the opinion of the Court with respect to Parts I, III, and IV, in which O'Connor, Kennedy, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer, JJ., joined, and an opinion with respect to Parts II and V, in which Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer, JJ., joined. O'Connor, J., delivered the opinion of the Court with respect to Part II (except as to the footnote), in which Rehnquist, C. J., and Kennedy and Thomas, JJ., joined, and in which Scalia, J., joined, except as to the footnote, and an opinion concurring in part and *366 concurring in the judgment, in which Kennedy, J., joined, post, p. 399. Rehnquist, C. J., filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part, in which Scalia and Thomas, JJ., joined, post, p. 416.
John J. Gibbons argued the cause for petitioner. With him on the briefs were Brian A. Powers, by appointment of the Court, 526 U. S. 1110, and Ellen O. Boardman.
Robert Q. Harris, Assistant Attorney General of Virginia, argued the cause for respondent. With him on the brief was Mark L. Earley, Attorney General.[*]
*367 Justice Stevens announced the judgment of the Court and delivered the opinion of the Court with respect to Parts I, III, and IV, and an opinion with respect to Parts II and V.[*]
The questions presented are whether Terry Williams' constitutional right to the effective assistance of counsel as defined in Strickland v. Washington, 466 U. S. 668 (1984), was violated, and whether the judgment of the Virginia Supreme Court refusing to set aside his death sentence "was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States," within the meaning of 28 U. S. C. § 2254(d)(1) (1994 ed., Supp. III). We answer both questions affirmatively.
I
On November 3, 1985, Harris Stone was found dead in his residence on Henry Street in Danville, Virginia. Finding no indication of a struggle, local officials determined that the cause of death was blood alcohol poisoning, and the case was considered closed. Six months after Stone's death, Terry Williams, who was then incarcerated in the "I" unit of the city jail for an unrelated offense, wrote a letter to the police stating that he had killed "`that man down on Henry Street' " and also stating that he "`did it' " to that "`lady down on West Green Street' " and was "`very sorry.' " The letter was unsigned, but it closed with a reference to "I cell." App. 41. The police readily identified Williams as its author, and, on April 25, 1986, they obtained several statements from him. In one Williams admitted that, after Stone refused to lend him "`a couple of dollars,' " he had killed Stone with a *368 mattock and taken the money from his wallet.[1]Id., at 4. In September 1986, Williams was convicted of robbery and capital murder.
At Williams' sentencing hearing, the prosecution proved that Williams had been convicted of armed robbery in 1976 and burglary and grand larceny in 1982. The prosecution also introduced the written confessions that Williams had made in April. The prosecution described two auto thefts and two separate violent assaults on elderly victims perpetrated after the Stone murder. On December 4, 1985, Williams had started a fire outside one victim's residence before attacking and robbing him. On March 5, 1986, Williams had brutally assaulted an elderly woman on West Green Street an incident he had mentioned in his letter to the police. That confession was particularly damaging because other evidence established that the woman was in a "vegetative state" and not expected to recover. Id., at 60. Williams had also been convicted of arson for setting a fire in the jail while awaiting trial in this case. Two expert witnesses employed by the State testified that there was a "high probability" *369 that Williams would pose a serious continuing threat to society. Id., at 89.
The evidence offered by Williams' trial counsel at the sentencing hearing consisted of the testimony of Williams' mother, two neighbors, and a taped excerpt from a statement by a psychiatrist. One of the neighbors had not been previously interviewed by defense counsel, but was noticed by counsel in the audience during the proceedings and asked to testify on the spot. The three witnesses briefly described Williams as a "nice boy" and not a violent person. Id., at 124. The recorded psychiatrist's testimony did little more than relate Williams' statement during an examination that in the course of one of his earlier robberies, he had removed the bullets from a gun so as not to injure anyone.
In his cross-examination of the prosecution witnesses, Williams' counsel repeatedly emphasized the fact that Williams had initiated the contact with the police that enabled them to solve the murder and to identify him as the perpetrator of the recent assaults, as well as the car thefts. In closing argument, Williams' counsel characterized Williams' confessional statements as "dumb," but asked the jury to give weight to the fact that he had "turned himself in, not on one crime but on four . . . that the [police otherwise] would not have solved." Id., at 140. The weight of defense counsel's closing, however, was devoted to explaining that it was difficult to find a reason why the jury should spare Williams' life.[2]
*370 The jury found a probability of future dangerousness and unanimously fixed Williams' punishment at death. The trial judge concluded that such punishment was "proper" and "just" and imposed the death sentence. Id., at 154. The Virginia Supreme Court affirmed the conviction and sentence. Williams v. Commonwealth, 234 Va. 168, 360 S. E. 2d 361 (1987), cert. denied, Williams v. Virginia, 484 U. S. 1020 (1988). It rejected Williams' argument that when the trial judge imposed sentence, he failed to give mitigating weight to the fact that Williams had turned himself in. 234 Va., at 181-182, 360 S. E. 2d, at 369-370.
State Habeas Corpus Proceedings
In 1988 Williams filed for state collateral relief in the Danville Circuit Court. The petition was subsequently amended, and the Circuit Court (the same judge who had presided over Williams' trial and sentencing) held an evidentiary hearing on Williams' claim that trial counsel had been ineffective.[3] Based on the evidence adduced after two days of hearings, Judge Ingram found that Williams' conviction was valid, but that his trial attorneys had been ineffective during sentencing. Among the evidence reviewed that had not been presented at trial were documents prepared in connection with Williams' commitment when he was 11 years old that dramatically described mistreatment, abuse, and neglect during his early childhood, as well as testimony that he was "borderline mentally retarded," had suffered repeated head injuries, and might have mental impairments organic in origin. App. 528-529, 595. The habeas hearing also revealed *371 that the same experts who had testified on the State's behalf at trial believed that Williams, if kept in a "structured environment," would not pose a future danger to society. Id., at 313-314.
Counsel's failure to discover and present this and other significant mitigating evidence was "below the range expected of reasonable, professional competent assistance of counsel." Id., at 424. Counsel's performance thus "did not measure up to the standard required under the holding of Strickland v. Washington, 466 U. S. 668 (1984), and [if it had,] there is a reasonable probability that the result of the sentencing phase would have been different." Id., at 429. Judge Ingram therefore recommended that Williams be granted a rehearing on the sentencing phase of his trial.
The Virginia Supreme Court did not accept that recommendation. Williams v. Warden, 254 Va. 16, 487 S. E. 2d 194 (1997). Although it assumed, without deciding, that trial counsel had been ineffective, id., at 23-26, 487 S. E. 2d, at 198, 200, it disagreed with the trial judge's conclusion that Williams had suffered sufficient prejudice to warrant relief. Treating the prejudice inquiry as a mixed question of law and fact, the Virginia Supreme Court accepted the factual determination that available evidence in mitigation had not been presented at the trial, but held that the trial judge had misapplied the law in two respects. First, relying on our decision in Lockhart v. Fretwell, 506 U. S. 364 (1993), the court held that it was wrong for the trial judge to rely "`on mere outcome determination' " when assessing prejudice, 254 Va., at 23, 487 S. E. 2d, at 198 (quoting Lockhart, 506 U. S., at 369). Second, it construed the trial judge's opinion as having "adopted a per se approach" that would establish prejudice whenever any mitigating evidence was omitted. 254 Va., at 26, 487 S. E. 2d, at 200.
The court then reviewed the prosecution evidence supporting the "future dangerousness" aggravating circumstance, reciting Williams' criminal history, including the several *372 most recent offenses to which he had confessed. In comparison, it found that the excluded mitigating evidence which it characterized as merely indicating "that numerous people, mostly relatives, thought that defendant was nonviolent and could cope very well in a structured environment," ibid. "barely would have altered the profile of this defendant that was presented to the jury," ibid. On this basis, the court concluded that there was no reasonable possibility that the omitted evidence would have affected the jury's sentencing recommendation, and that Williams had failed to demonstrate that his sentencing proceeding was fundamentally unfair.
Federal Habeas Corpus Proceedings
Having exhausted his state remedies, Williams sought a federal writ of habeas corpus pursuant to 28 U. S. C. § 2254 (1994 ed. and Supp. III). After reviewing the state habeas hearing transcript and the state courts' findings of fact and conclusions of law, the federal trial judge agreed with the Virginia trial judge: The death sentence was constitutionally infirm.
After noting that the Virginia Supreme Court had not addressed the question whether trial counsel's performance at the sentencing hearing fellbelow the range of competence demanded of lawyers in criminal cases, the judge began by addressing that issue in detail. He identified five categories of mitigating evidence that counsel had failed to introduce,[4]*373 and he rejected the argument that counsel's failure to conduct an adequate investigation had been a strategic decision to rely almost entirely on the fact that Williams had voluntarily confessed.
According to Williams' trial counsel's testimony before the state habeas court, counsel did not fail to seek Williams' juvenile and social services records because he thought they would be counterproductive, but because counsel erroneously believed that "`state law didn't permit it.' " App. 470. Counsel also acknowledged in the course of the hearings that information about Williams' childhood would have been important in mitigation. And counsel's failure to contact a potentially persuasive character witness was likewise not a conscious strategic choice, but simply a failure to return that witness' phone call offering his service. Id., at 470-471. Finally, even if counsel neglected to conduct such an investigation at the time as part of a tactical decision, the District Judge found, tactics as a matter of reasonable performance could not justify the omissions.
Turning to the prejudice issue, the judge determined that there was "`a reasonable probability that, but for counsel's unprofessional errors, the result of the proceeding would have been different.' Strickland, 466 U. S. at 694." Id., at 473. He found that the Virginia Supreme Court had erroneously assumed that Lockhart had modified the Strickland standard for determining prejudice, and that it had made an important error of fact in discussing its finding of no prejudice.[5] Having introduced his analysis of Williams' claim *374 with the standard of review applicable on habeas appeals provided by 28 U. S. C. § 2254(d) (1994 ed., Supp. III), the judge concluded that those errors established that the Virginia Supreme Court's decision "was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law" within the meaning of § 2254(d)(1).
The Federal Court of Appeals reversed. 163 F. 3d 860 (CA4 1998). It construed § 2254(d)(1) as prohibiting the grant of habeas corpus relief unless the state court "`decided the question by interpreting or applying the relevant precedent in a manner that reasonable jurists would all agree is unreasonable.' " Id., at 865 (quoting Green v. French, 143 F. 3d 865, 870 (CA4 1998)). Applying that standard, it could not say that the Virginia Supreme Court's decision on the prejudice issue was an unreasonable application of the tests developed in either Strickland or Lockhart.[6] It explained that the evidence that Williams presented a future danger to society was "simply overwhelming," 163 F. 3d, at 868, it endorsed the Virginia Supreme Court's interpretation of Lockhart, 163 F. 3d, at 869, and it characterized the state court's understanding of the facts in this case as "reasonable," id., at 870.
We granted certiorari, 526 U. S. 1050 (1999), and now reverse.
II
In 1867, Congress enacted a statute providing that federal courts "shall have power to grant writs of habeas corpus in *375 all cases where any person may be restrained of his or her liberty in violation of the constitution, or of any treaty or law of the United States . . . ." Act of Feb. 5, 1867, ch. 28, § 1, 14 Stat. 385. Over the years, the federal habeas corpus statute has been repeatedly amended, but the scope of that jurisdictional grant remains the same.[7] It is, of course, well settled that the fact that constitutional error occurred in the proceedings that led to a state-court conviction may not alone be sufficient reason for concluding that a prisoner is entitled to the remedy of habeas. See, e. g., Stone v. Powell, 428 U. S. 465 (1976); Brecht v. Abrahamson, 507 U. S. 619 (1993). On the other hand, errors that undermine confidence in the fundamental fairness of the state adjudication certainly justify the issuance of the federal writ. See, e. g., Teague v. Lane, 489 U. S. 288, 311-314 (1989) (quoting Mackey v. United States, 401 U. S. 667, 692-694 (1971) (Harlan, J., concurring in judgments in part and dissenting in part), and quoting Rose v. Lundy, 455 U. S. 509, 544 (1982) (Stevens, J., dissenting)). The deprivation of the right to the effective assistance of counsel recognized in Strickland is such an error. Strickland, 466 U. S., at 686, 697-698.
The warden here contends that federal habeas corpus relief is prohibited by the amendment to 28 U. S. C. § 2254 (1994 ed., Supp. III), enacted as a part of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA). The relevant portion of that amendment provides:
*376 "(d) An application for a writ of habeas corpus on behalf of a person in custody pursuant to the judgment of a State court shall not be granted with respect to any claim that was adjudicated on the merits in State court proceedings unless the adjudication of the claim
"(1) resulted in a decision that was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States . . . ."
In this case, the Court of Appeals applied the construction of the amendment that it had adopted in its earlier opinion in Green v. French, 143 F. 3d 865 (CA4 1998). It read the amendment as prohibiting federal courts from issuing the writ unless:
"(a) the state court decision is in `square conflict' with Supreme Court precedent that is controlling as to law and fact or (b) if no such controlling decision exists, `the state court's resolution of a question of pure law rests upon an objectively unreasonable derivation of legal principles from the relevant [S]upreme [C]ourt precedents, or if its decision rests upon an objectively unreasonable application of established principles to new facts,' " 163 F. 3d, at 865 (quoting Green, 143 F. 3d, at 870).
Accordingly, it held that a federal court may issue habeas relief only if "`the state courts have decided the question by interpreting or applying the relevant precedent in a manner that reasonable jurists would all agree is unreasonable,' " 163 F. 3d, at 865.[8]
*377 We are convinced that that interpretation of the amendment is incorrect. It would impose a test for determining when a legal rule is clearly established that simply cannot be squared with the real practice of decisional law.[9] It would apply a standard for determining the "reasonableness" of state-court decisions that is not contained in the statute itself, and that Congress surely did not intend. And it would wrongly require the federal courts, including this Court, to defer to state judges' interpretations of federal law.
As the Fourth Circuit would have it, a state-court judgment is "unreasonable" in the face of federal law only if all reasonable jurists would agree that the state court was unreasonable. Thus, in this case, for example, even if the Virginia Supreme Court misread our opinion in Lockhart, we could not grant relief unless we believed that none of the judges who agreed with the state court's interpretation of that case was a "reasonable jurist." But the statute says *378 nothing about "reasonable judges," presumably because all, or virtually all, such judges occasionally commit error; they make decisions that in retrospect may be characterized as "unreasonable." Indeed, it is most unlikely that Congress would deliberately impose such a requirement of unanimity on federal judges. As Congress is acutely aware, reasonable lawyers and lawgivers regularly disagree with one another. Congress surely did not intend that the views of one such judge who might think that relief is not warranted in a particular case should always have greater weight than the contrary, considered judgment of several other reasonable judges.
The inquiry mandated by the amendment relates to the way in which a federal habeas court exercises its duty to decide constitutional questions; the amendment does not alter the underlying grant of jurisdiction in § 2254(a), see n. 7, supra.[10] When federal judges exercise their federalquestion jurisdiction under the "judicial Power" of Article III of the Constitution, it is "emphatically the province and duty" of those judges to "say what the law is." Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 177 (1803). At the core of this *379 power is the federal courts' independent responsibilityindependent from its coequal branches in the Federal Government, and independent from the separate authority of the several Statesto interpret federal law. A construction of AEDPA that would require the federal courts to cede this authority to the courts of the States would be inconsistent with the practice that federal judges have traditionally followed in discharging their duties under Article III of the Constitution. If Congress had intended to require such an important change in the exercise of our jurisdiction, we believe it would have spoken with much greater clarity than is found in the text of AEDPA.
This basic premise informs our interpretation of both parts of § 2254(d)(1): first, the requirement that the determinations of state courts be tested only against "clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States," and second, the prohibition on the issuance of the writ unless the state court's decision is "contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of," that clearly established law. We address each part in turn.
The "clearly established law" requirement
In Teague v. Lane, 489 U. S. 288 (1989), we held that the petitioner was not entitled to federal habeas relief because he was relying on a rule of federal law that had not been announced until after his state conviction became final. The antiretroactivity rule recognized in Teague, which prohibits reliance on "new rules," is the functional equivalent of a statutory provision commanding exclusive reliance on "clearly established law." Because there is no reason to believe that Congress intended to require federal courts to ask both whether a rule sought on habeas is "new" under Teague which remains the lawand also whether it is "clearly established" under AEDPA, it seems safe to assume that Congress *380 had congruent concepts in mind.[11] It is perfectly clear that AEDPA codifies Teague to the extent that Teague requires federal habeas courts to deny relief that is contingent upon a rule of law not clearly established at the time the state conviction became final.[12]
Teague `s core principles are therefore relevant to our construction of this requirement. Justice Harlan recognized *381 the "inevitable difficulties" that come with "attempting `to determine whether a particular decision has really announced a "new" rule at all or whether it has simply applied a well-established constitutional principle to govern a case which is closely analogous to those which have been previously considered in the prior case law.' " Mackey, 401 U. S., at 695 (quoting Desist v. United States, 394 U. S. 244, 263 (1969)). But Teague established some guidance for making this determination, explaining that a federal habeas court operates within the bounds of comity and finality if it applies a rule "dictated by precedent existing at the time the defendant's conviction became final." 489 U. S., at 301 (emphasis deleted). A rule that "breaks new ground or imposes a new obligation on the States or the Federal Government," ibid., falls outside this universe of federal law.
To this, AEDPA has added, immediately following the "clearly established law" requirement, a clause limiting the area of relevant law to that "determined by the Supreme Court of the United States." 28 U. S. C. § 2254(d)(1) (1994 ed., Supp. III). If this Court has not broken sufficient legal ground to establish an asked-for constitutional principle, the lower federal courts cannot themselves establish such a principle with clarity sufficient to satisfy the AEDPA bar. In this respect, we agree with the Seventh Circuit that this clause "extends the principle of Teague by limiting the source of doctrine on which a federal court may rely in addressing the application for a writ." Lindh v. Murphy, 96 F. 3d 856, 869 (1996). As that court explained:
"This is a retrenchment from former practice, which allowed the United States courts of appeals to rely on their own jurisprudence in addition to that of the Supreme Court. The novelty in this portion of § 2254(d)(1) is not the `contrary to' part but the reference to `Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States ` (emphasis added). This extends the principle of Teague [v. Lane, 489 U. S. 288 (1989),] by limiting the *382 source of doctrine on which a federal court may rely in addressing the application for a writ. It does not, however, purport to limit the federal courts' independent interpretive authority with respect to federal questions." Ibid.
A rule that fails to satisfy the foregoing criteria is barred by Teague from application on collateral review, and, similarly, is not available as a basis for relief in a habeas case to which AEDPA applies.
In the context of this case, we also note that, as our precedent interpreting Teague has demonstrated, rules of law may be sufficiently clear for habeas purposes even when they are expressed in terms of a generalized standard rather than as a bright-line rule. As Justice Kennedy has explained:
"If the rule in question is one which of necessity requires a case-by-case examination of the evidence, then we can tolerate a number of specific applications without saying that those applications themselves create a new rule. . . . Where the beginning point is a rule of this general application, a rule designed for the specific purpose of evaluating a myriad of factual contexts, it will be the infrequent case that yields a result so novel that it forges a new rule, one not dictated by precedent." Wright v. West, 505 U. S. 277, 308-309 (1992) (opinion concurring in judgment).
Moreover, the determination whether or not a rule is clearly established at the time a state court renders its final judgment of conviction is a question as to which the "federal courts must make an independent evaluation." Id., at 305 (O'Connor, J., concurring in judgment); accord, id., at 307 (Kennedy, J., concurring in judgment).
It has been urged, in contrast, that we should read Teague and its progeny to encompass a broader principle of deference requiring federal courts to "validat[e] `reasonable, good-faith interpretations' of the law" by state courts. *383 Brief for California et al. as Amici Curiae 6 (quoting Butler v. McKellar, 494 U. S. 407, 414 (1990)). The position has been bolstered with references to our statements elucidating the "new rule" inquiry as one turning on whether "reasonable jurists" would agree the rule was not clearly established. Sawyer v. Smith, 497 U. S. 227, 234 (1990). This presumption of deference was in essence the position taken by three Members of this Court in Wright, 505 U. S., at 290 291 (opinion of Thomas, J.) ("[A] federal habeas court `must defer to the state court's decision rejecting the claim unless that decision is patently unreasonable' ") (quoting Butler, 494 U. S., at 422 (Brennan, J., dissenting)).
Teague, however, does not extend this far. The often repeated language that Teague endorses "reasonable, goodfaith interpretations" by state courts is an explanation of policy, not a statement of law. The Teague cases reflect this Court's view that habeas corpus is not to be used as a second criminal trial, and federal courts are not to run roughshod over the considered findings and judgments of the state courts that conducted the original trial and heard the initial appeals. On the contrary, we have long insisted that federal habeas courts attend closely to those considered decisions, and give them full effect when their findings and judgments are consistent with federal law. See Thompson v. Keohane, 516 U. S. 99, 107-116 (1995). But as Justice O'Connor explained in Wright:
"[T]he duty of the federal court in evaluating whether a rule is `new' is not the same as deference; . . . Teague does not direct federal courts to spend less time or effort scrutinizing the existing federal law, on the ground that they can assume the state courts interpreted it properly. . . .
"[T]he maxim that federal courts should `give great weight to the considered conclusions of a coequal state judiciary' . . . does not mean that we have held in the past that federal courts must presume the correctness *384 of a state court's legal conclusions on habeas, or that a state court's incorrect legal determination has ever been allowed to stand because it was reasonable. We have always held that federal courts, even on habeas, have an independent obligation to say what the law is." 505 U. S., at 305 (opinion concurring in judgment).
We are convinced that in the phrase, "clearly established law," Congress did not intend to modify that independent obligation.
The "contrary to, or an unreasonable application of," requirement
The message that Congress intended to convey by using the phrases "contrary to" and "unreasonable application of" is not entirely clear. The prevailing view in the Circuits is that the former phrase requires de novo review of "pure" questions of law and the latter requires some sort of "reasonability" review of so-called mixed questions of law and fact. See, e. g., Neelley v. Nagle, 138 F. 3d 917 (CA11 1998); Drinkard v. Johnson, 97 F. 3d 751 (CA5 1996); Lindh v. Murphy, 96 F. 3d 856 (CA7 1996) (en banc), rev'd on other grounds, 521 U. S. 320 (1997).
We are not persuaded that the phrases define two mutually exclusive categories of questions. Most constitutional questions that arise in habeas corpus proceedingsand therefore most "decisions" to be maderequire the federal judge to apply a rule of law to a set of facts, some of which may be disputed and some undisputed. For example, an erroneous conclusion that particular circumstances established the voluntariness of a confession, or that there exists a conflict of interest when one attorney represents multiple defendants, may well be described either as "contrary to" or as an "unreasonable application of" the governing rule of law. Cf. Miller v. Fenton, 474 U. S. 104, 116 (1985); Cuyler v. Sullivan, 446 U. S. 335, 341-342 (1980). In constitutional adjudication, as in the common law, rules of law often develop *385 incrementally as earlier decisions are applied to new factual situations. See Wright, 505 U. S., at 307 (Kennedy, J., concurring in judgment). But rules that depend upon such elaboration are hardly less lawlike than those that establish a bright-line test.
Indeed, our pre-AEDPA efforts to distinguish questions of fact, questions of law, and "mixed questions," and to create an appropriate standard of habeas review for each, generated some not insubstantial differences of opinion as to which issues of law fell into which category of question, and as to which standard of review applied to each. See Thompson, 516 U. S., at 110-111 (acknowledging "`that the Court has not charted an entirely clear course in this area' " and that "the proper characterization of a question as one of fact or law is sometimes slippery") (quoting Miller, 474 U. S., at 113). We thus think the Fourth Circuit was correct when it attributed the lack of clarity in the statute, in part, to the overlapping meanings of the phrases "contrary to" and "unreasonable application of." See Green, 143 F. 3d, at 870.
The statutory text likewise does not obviously prescribe a specific, recognizable standard of review for dealing with either phrase. Significantly, it does not use any term, such as "de novo" or "plain error," that would easily identify a familiar standard of review. Rather, the text is fairly read simply as a command that a federal court not issue the habeas writ unless the state court was wrong as a matter of law or unreasonable in its application of law in a given case. The suggestion that a wrong state-court "decision"a legal judgment rendered "after consideration of facts, and . . . law, " Black's Law Dictionary 407 (6th ed. 1990) (emphasis added)may no longer be redressed through habeas (because it is unreachable under the "unreasonable application" phrase) is based on a mistaken insistence that the § 2254(d)(1) phrases have not only independent, but mutually exclusive, meanings. Whether or not a federal court can issue the writ "under [the] `unreasonable application' clause," the statute is *386 clear that habeas may issue under § 2254(d)(1) if a state-court "decision" is "contrary to . . . clearly established Federal law." We thus anticipate that there will be a variety of cases, like this one, in which both phrases may be implicated.
Even though we cannot conclude that the phrases establish "a body of rigid rules," they do express a "mood" that the Federal Judiciary must respect. Universal Camera Corp. v. NLRB, 340 U. S. 474, 487 (1951). In this respect, it seems clear that Congress intended federal judges to attend with the utmost care to state-court decisions, including all of the reasons supporting their decisions, before concluding that those proceedings were infected by constitutional error sufficiently serious to warrant the issuance