412, 120 S.Ct. 1495. "In this respect, the ‘clearly established Federal law’ phrase bears only a slight connection to [the Court’s] Teague jurisprudence.” Id. Oddly, the following sentence of Justice O’Connor's opinion appears to contradict or at least raise questions as to the pronouncement just quoted. Whatever the rule may be, however, it appears that § 2254(d)(1) significantly narrows the Court’s previous standard. 5 . Article III does not, of course, prohibit the federal courts themselves from developing rules governing the manner in which they interpret law and adjudicate cases. The Supreme Court can, and has, prescribed rules binding federal courts to a particular method of decisionmaking. See, e.g., Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194, 200-01, 121 S.Ct. 2151, 150 L.Ed.2d 272 (2001) (<HOLDING>). This right of the federal courts to make
holding that defendant is entitled to qualified immunity because plaintiff failed to allege the violation of a clearly established constitutional right holding that the court evaluating a claim of qualified immunity must first determine whether the plaintiff states a claim of a constitutional violation at all and then must determine whether the claimed right was clearly established before proceeding to the qualified immunity question recognizing that qualified immunity shields officials unless the plaintiff demonstrates the defendant violated a constitutional right that was clearly established holding that in determining whether a state officer is entitled to qualified immunity for  1983 purposes courts may not consider whether the constitutional right was clearly established before determining first that a constitutional right was violated holding that second element of qualified immunity test is whether the law violated was clearly established