In the case of Teague v. Lane, Director, Illinois Department of Corrections et al., 1988, petitioner Mackey Teague was convicted for murder and attempted murder in an Illinois state court. He appealed his conviction on the grounds that he had been denied a fair trial due to racial bias during jury selection process. The Supreme Court ruled against him by creating what is now known as the "Teague rule". This rule states that new constitutional rules of criminal procedure cannot be applied retroactively to cases on collateral review unless they fall within one of two exceptions: if it places certain kinds of primary conduct beyond the power of criminal law-making authorities or requires observance procedures that are implicit in the concept of ordered liberty. In this case, since neither exception applied and because no such rule existed at time when Mr.Teague's conviction became final (before Batson v.Kentucky), his claim was dismissed.

In the dissenting opinion for Teague v. Lane, Justice Brennan argued that the majority's new rule limiting habeas corpus relief was not constitutionally justified and would unduly restrict federal courts' ability to correct state court errors. He contended that this decision contradicted previous rulings which allowed retroactive application of new constitutional rules in habeas cases. Furthermore, he criticized the majority’s distinction between substantive and procedural rules as arbitrary and unworkable because it failed to consider whether a rule prevents an impermissibly large risk of an inaccurate conviction. Moreover, he disagreed with their assertion that only watershed rules should be applied retroactively since all constitutional violations are serious enough to warrant correction on collateral review.