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Opinion of the Court
bargaining agreements but also to authorize the development of federal common-law rules of decision, in large part to assure that agreements to arbitrate grievances would be enforced, regardless of the vagaries of state law and lingering hostility toward extrajudicial dispute resolution, see Textile Workers v. Lincoln Mills of Ala., 353 U. S. 448, 455-456 (1957); see also Steelworkers v. Warrior & Gulf Nav. Co., 363 U. S. 574 (1960); Avco Corp. v. Machinists, 390 U. S. 557, 559 (1968) ("§ 301 . . . was fashioned by Congress to place sanctions behind agreements to arbitrate grievance disputes"). And in Teamsters v. Lucas Flour Co., 369 U. S. 95 (1962), we recognized an important corollary to the Lincoln Mills rule: while § 301 does not preclude state courts from taking jurisdiction over cases arising from disputes over the interpretation of collective-bargaining agreements, state contract law must yield to the developing federal common law, lest common terms in bargaining agreements be given different and potentially inconsistent interpretations in different jurisdictions. See 369 U. S., at 103-104.16
And while this sensible "acorn" of § 301 pre-emption recognized in Lucas Flour has sprouted modestly in more recent decisions of this Court, see, e. g., Lueck, supra, at 210 ("[I]f the policies that animate § 301 are to be given their proper range . . . the pre-emptive effect of § 301 must extend beyond suits alleging contract violations"), it has not yet become, nor may it, a sufficiently "mighty oak," see Golden State I, 475 U. S., at 622 (Rehnquist, J., dissenting), to supply the cover the Commissioner seeks here. To the contrary, the pre-emption rule has been applied only to assure that the
16 Within its proper sphere, § 301 has been accorded unusual pre-emptive power. In Avco Corp. v. Machinists, 390 U. S. 557 (1968), for example, we recognized that an action for breach of a collective-bargaining agreement "ar[ose] under" § 301 (and therefore was subject to federal removal, see 28 U. S. C. § 1441 (1988 ed. and Supp. IV)), despite the fact that the petitioner's complaint did not mention the federal provision and appeared to plead an adequate claim for relief under state contract law.
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