Cite as: 509 U. S. 579 (1993)
Opinion of the Court
Petitioners' primary attack, however, is not on the content but on the continuing authority of the rule. They contend that the Frye test was superseded by the adoption of the Federal Rules of Evidence.5 We agree.
We interpret the legislatively enacted Federal Rules of Evidence as we would any statute. Beech Aircraft Corp. v. Rainey, 488 U. S. 153, 163 (1988). Rule 402 provides the baseline:
"All relevant evidence is admissible, except as otherwise provided by the Constitution of the United States, by Act of Congress, by these rules, or by other rules prescribed by the Supreme Court pursuant to statutory authority. Evidence which is not relevant is not admissible."
"Relevant evidence" is defined as that which has "any tendency to make the existence of any fact that is of consequence to the determination of the action more probable or less probable than it would be without the evidence." Rule 401. The Rules' basic standard of relevance thus is a liberal one.
Frye, of course, predated the Rules by half a century. In United States v. Abel, 469 U. S. 45 (1984), we considered the pertinence of background common law in interpreting the Rules of Evidence. We noted that the Rules occupy the field, id., at 49, but, quoting Professor Cleary, the Reporter,
5 Like the question of Frye's merit, the dispute over its survival has divided courts and commentators. Compare, e. g., United States v. Williams, 583 F. 2d 1194 (CA2 1978) (Frye is superseded by the Rules of Evidence), cert. denied, 439 U. S. 1117 (1979), with Christophersen v. Allied-Signal Corp., 939 F. 2d 1106, 1111, 1115-1116 (CA5 1991) (en banc) (Frye and the Rules coexist), cert. denied, 503 U. S. 912 (1992), 3 J. Weinstein & M. Berger, Weinstein's Evidence ¶ 702[03], pp. 702-36 to 702-37 (1988) (hereinafter Weinstein & Berger) (Frye is dead), and M. Graham, Handbook of Federal Evidence § 703.2 (3d ed. 1991) (Frye lives). See generally P. Giannelli & E. Imwinkelried, Scientific Evidence § 1-5, at 28-29 (citing authorities).
587
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