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Cite as: 546 U. S. 189 (2006)

207

Stevens, J., concurring in judgment

than what a federal court believes it could, or should, have done. III Determining what the California Supreme Court has “ac­ tually” decided is sometimes easy and sometimes difﬁcult. Its rulings denying habeas corpus petitions generally fall into three broad categories: those expressly deciding the timeliness question, those deciding the merits without com­ ment on timeliness, and those that do not disclose the basis for the decision.3 To simplify the inquiry, a straightforward rule can be applied to each type of order. The easiest cases, of course, are those in which the state­ court order expressly states that a petition was either un­ timely or timely. As we have explained, if the state court’s untimeliness ruling is clear, “that would be the end of the matter,” even if the court had also ruled on the merits. Saf­ fold, 536 U. S., at 226. Conversely, an unequivocal holding that a delay was not unreasonable should be respected even if a federal judge would have decided the issue differently.4 The decision that a petition has been untimely ﬁled need not be explicitly stated; citation to a case in which a petition was dismissed as untimely ﬁled certainly would sufﬁce.5 Cf. Brief for Petitioner 27; Robbins, 18 Cal. 4th, at 814, n. 34, 959 P. 2d, at 340, n. 34 (explaining California’s practice of citing certain cases for certain propositions). More difﬁcult are those cases in which the state court rules on the merits without any comment on timeliness. 3 Orders resting on alternative grounds, such as the one in Carey v. Saffold, 536 U. S. 214 (2002), may require special consideration. 4 At oral argument, California’s Deputy Attorney General agreed that if the California Supreme Court had expressly decided that respondent Chavis’ state habeas petition included a satisfactory explanation for the 3-year delay preceding his ﬁling in that court, but decided against him on the merits, the federal statute of limitations would have been tolled. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 19–20. 5 As I point out, infra, at 210, this is such a case.