536
Opinion of Blackmun, J.
anything, specific actions mandated or disallowed by a formal governing authority. See, e. g., Webster's Third New International Dictionary 1929 (1981) (defining "require" as "to ask for authoritatively or imperatively: claim by right and authority" and "to demand as necessary or essential (as on general principles or in order to comply with or satisfy some regulation)"); Black's Law Dictionary 1212 (6th ed. 1990) (defining "prohibition" as an "[a]ct or law prohibiting something"; an "interdiction").
More important, the question whether common-law damages actions exert a regulatory effect on manufacturers analogous to that of positive enactments—an assumption crucial to the plurality's conclusion that the phrase "requirement or prohibition" encompasses common-law actions—is significantly more complicated than the plurality's brief quotation from San Diego Building Trades Council v. Garmon, 359 U. S. 236, 247 (1959), see ante, at 521, would suggest. The effect of tort law on a manufacturer's behavior is necessarily indirect. Although an award of damages by its very nature attaches additional consequences to the manufacturer's continued unlawful conduct, no particular course of action (e. g., the adoption of a new warning label) is required. A manufacturer found liable on, for example, a failure-to-warn claim may respond in a number of ways. It may decide to accept damages awards as a cost of doing business and not alter its behavior in any way. See Goodyear Atomic Corp. v. Miller, 486 U. S. 174, 185-186 (1988) (corporation "may choose to disregard [state] safety regulations and simply pay an additional" damages award if an employee is injured as a result of a safety violation). Or, by contrast, it may choose to avoid future awards by dispensing warnings through a variety of alternative mechanisms, such as package inserts, public service advertisements, or general educational programs. The level of choice that a defendant retains in shaping its own behavior distinguishes the indirect regulatory effect of the common law from positive enact-
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