What is the standard of review for a motion seeking to overturn a determination made by a federal court?

"[W]hen . . . the trial court determination is one for which neither a clear statutory prescription nor a historical tradition exists, it is uncommonly difficult to derive from the pattern of appellate review of other questions an analytical framework that will yield the correct [standard of review]." Pierce v. Underwood, 487 U.S. 552, 558 (1988). Here, the task of divining a fruitful analytical framework is particularly difficult because "other questions" (id.) which intuitively seem likely subjects for analogous appellate review have been addressed by the courts only rarely and, moreover, have yielded conflicting results.