Being all-weather federalists, we at CJLF did not support the state of Minnesota's efforts last term to have the U.S. Supreme Court tell the Minnesota courts that they had to follow the federal rule on retroactivity of new rules on habeas corpus, Teague v. Lane, 489 U.S. 288 (1989). In Danforth v. Minnesota, the high court clarified that the Minnesota court could adopt Teague for state habeas or not, as a matter of state law. (Now the other shoe needs to drop: overruling Yates v. Aiken, 484 U.S. 211 (1988).)

On remand, the Minnesota Supreme Court (correctly, in my opinion) rejected the attacks on Teague and accepted it as the best of the available alternatives. Against the argument that the state should return to the old Linkletter-Stovall approach, the court needed only to quote Justice Harlan's criticism of nearly four decades ago.