FRANKFURTER, J., dissenting. 339 U.S. conclusion is reached cannot remotely be deemed dictum. A decision implies the process of reasoning which requires it. It is essential to be clear about what denial of certiorari means before determining whether a petition for certiorari is prerequisite to the exercise of habeas corpus jurisdiction by a District Court. Surely it is necessary to consider what a procedural requirement means before making it a requirement. 7. The significance of a denial of a petition for certiorari ought no longer to require discussion. This Court has said again and again and again that such a denial has no legal significance whatever bearing on the merits of the claim. The denial means that this Court has refused to take the case. It means nothing else. The State court's judgment is left undisturbed without any legal reinforcement whatever of the views which the State court expressed. Counsel at the bar have frequently been stopped for drawing comfort out of such a denial and the Court's opinions have indicated impatience with failure to recognize that the only thing that such a denial imports is that there were not four members of the Court who deemed it desirable, for their respective reasons, to review a decision of the lower court. Even before the Judiciary Act of 1925 so vastly extended this Court's certiorari jurisdiction, the Court said: "The denial of a writ of certiorari imports no expression of opinion upon the merits of the case, as the bar has been told many times." United States v. Carver, 260 U. S. 482, 490. This note of impatience has been sounded repeatedly. The wholly negative meaning of a denial of certiorari is not so merely because we have said it. We have said it because it must be so unless the whole conception of certiorari in relation to the business of this Court is to be radically transformed. Such a revolutionary change cannot justifiably be taken in relation to one large group 200 FRANKFURTER, J., dissenting. of cases without drastic revision of the Court's treatment of such cases, with far-reaching consequences to the business of the Court and its proper discharge. Nothing is more basic to the functioning of this Court than an understanding that denial of certiorari is occasioned by a variety of reasons which precludes the implication that were the case here the merits would go against the petitioner. Petitions may have been denied because, even though serious constitutional questions were raised, it seemed to at least six members of the Court that the issue was either not ripe enough or too moribund for adjudication; that the question had better await the perspective of time or that time would soon bury the question or, for one reason or another, it was desirable to wait and see; or that the constitutional issue was entangled with nonconstitutional issues that raised doubt whether the constitutional issue could be effectively isolated; or for various other reasons not relating to the merits. Divergent and contradictory reasons often operate as to the same petition and lead to a common vote of denial. The want of explanations for denials of certiorari is in part due to the fact that a collective reason frequently could not be given. To suggest that a District Court can determine the significance to be attached to this Court's denial of certiorari by an examination of the record on certiorari here is to offer the District Courts darkness without Ariadne's thread. Particularly is this true in cases sought to be brought here from the State courts in which State and federal grounds are frequently entangled and an unambiguous federal question often does not emerge from the record. To attach significance to a denial of a certiorari petition regarding the merits of the issues raised by the petition would be to transform a mechanism for keeping cases out of this Court into a means of bringing them in. It would FRANKFURTER, J., dissenting. 339 U.S. contradict all that led to the adoption of certiorari jurisdiction and would reject the whole course of the Court's treatment of such petitions, both in practice and profession. For if denial does import an expression of opinion upon the merits of the case, then we must deal with the merits of the case. During the last four fiscal years the District Courts throughout the country had annually from 500 to 600 habeas corpus cases brought by petitioners under State custody. To overrule Wade v. Mayo and to make it the duty of this Court to pass on the merits of anything like the number of these cases which would have to be brought here on petitions for certiorari from the State courts would throw an almost impossible burden upon the Court.1 8. We certainly ought not to condition the power of the local District Court to entertain a petition for habeas corpus on a prior denial of a petition for certiorari here if such denial carries no other significance than does the denial of certiorari in any other class of cases. Meaningless multiplication of steps in the legal process can hardly be deemed a virtue in judicial administration. Nor would it be more respectful of the dignity of a State court for the District Court to disagree with the State court's view of federal law if such disagreement came after this Court had denied certiorari rather than before. It is suggested, however, that this Court should have the first opportunity to consider whether a State court 1 1 Judge Learned Hand has carried the requirement of eliciting a denial of a petition for certiorari in habeas corpus cases to its logical conclusion by giving such denial conclusive effect on the merits. Schechtman v. Foster, 172 F. 2d 339, 342-43. That is the logical conclusion of such a requirement-but it is the logic of unreality. For it flies in the face of the actualities of a denial. The considerations entering into such denials have necessitated the hitherto settled principle that denial carries no suggestion of adjudication on the merits. 200 FRANKFURTER, J., dissenting. was right in having denied a constitutional claim-what has been colloquially called a "first-crack" policy. The most weighty considerations of practical administration counsel against it. The burden of the Court's volume of business will be greatly increased, not merely because a greater number of certiorari petitions would be filed, but by reason of the effective pressure toward granting petitions more freely. For if the "first-crack" policy has any validity, it would require that every doubt be resolved in favor of granting certiorari, rather than leaving the case to the District Courts. Moreover, State court decisions involving denial of federal claims made in collateral attack on a conviction are frequently decisions based merely on allegations in the pleadings. This Court can dispose of them only as a matter of abstract pleading. The District Courts, on the other hand, can hold hearings when deemed appropriate, consider allegations on their merits if they are at all substantial and dispose of what often turn out to be unmeritorious claims. Thus, the impact upon federalState relationships of reversals of State court decisions, which this Court may not be able to avoid when it is limited to the pleadings, may well be avoided by lower federal courts, looking beyond paper allegations to the merits. It 9. There is still another reason why it makes against, not for, sound administration of justice to bar exercise by a District Court of its habeas corpus jurisdiction merely because the discretionary power of this Court to review a State court decision has not been invoked. is that cases involving federal claims by State prisoners so frequently involve questions of State law which must be answered before the federal issue can be reached. State questions are of two kinds: (1) Did the adverse State ruling exhaust the prisoner's available State rem FRANKFURTER, J., dissenting. 339 U.S. edies? (2) May the State court's judgment be deemed to rest on some State ground? Nothing stands out more prominently in the Court's experience with these cases than the doubts and difficulties in ascertaining the law controlling local practice and local remedies. Thus, according to the procedure of one State a constitutional issue like that in Mooney v. Holohan, supra, must be raised by habeas corpus, not coram nobis, while in another State only coram nobis is available, not habeas corpus. Although a State court may have felt that it wrote clearly, we may not be able to read clearly or at least in unison; some members of the Court read one way, some another. See, e. g., New York ex rel. Whitman v. Wilson, 318 U. S. 688; Morhous v. Supreme Court of New York, 293 N. Y. 131, 56 N. E. 2d 79; People v. Sadness, 300 N. Y. 69, 89 N. E. 2d 188. The difficulties in determining exhaustion of State remedies are illustrated by a litigation another stage of which was reached by denial of certiorari last Monday. Hawk v. Nebraska, 339 U. S. 923. At an earlier date, the Supreme Court of Nebraska had affirmed a denial of habeas corpus by the lower State court. Hawk v. Olson, 145 Neb. 306, 16 N. W. 2d 181. This Court granted certiorari and reversed on the merits, acting on the assumption that a federal right had been disregarded, 326 U. S. 271, despite our earlier statement in Ex parte Hawk, 321 U. S. 114, 116, to the effect that State remedies could not be deemed exhausted in Nebraska until coram nobis had been attempted. On the remand, the Nebraska Supreme Court advised us that we had misconceived its opinion and misunderstood local procedure-that it had not denied a federal claim out of hand but decided only that habeas corpus was not the proper procedural road to take in Nebraska. 146 Neb. 875, 22 N. W. 2d 136. Hawk then applied for a writ of habeas corpus in the federal District Court for Ne |