Cite as: 512 U. S. 532 (1994)
Opinion of the Court
gence, and prohibited employers from exempting themselves from FELA through contract; a 1939 amendment abolished the assumption of risk defense. See 45 U. S. C. §§ 51, 53-55.
We have liberally construed FELA to further Congress' remedial goal. For example, we held in Rogers v. Missouri Pacific R. Co., 352 U. S. 500 (1957), that a relaxed standard of causation applies under FELA. We stated that "[u]nder this statute the test of a jury case is simply whether the proofs justify with reason the conclusion that employer negligence played any part, even the slightest, in producing the injury or death for which damages are sought." Id., at 506. In Kernan, supra, we extended the reach of the principle of negligence per se to cover injuries suffered by employees as a result of their employers' statutory violations, even if the injuries sustained were not of a type that the relevant statute sought to prevent. See id., at 432-436. And in Urie, supra, we held that occupational diseases such as silicosis constitute compensable physical injuries under FELA, thereby rejecting the argument that the statute covered only injuries and deaths caused by accidents. See id., at 181.
That FELA is to be liberally construed, however, does not mean that it is a workers' compensation statute. We have insisted that FELA "does not make the employer the insurer of the safety of his employees while they are on duty. The basis of his liability is his negligence, not the fact that injuries occur." Ellis v. Union Pacific R. Co., 329 U. S. 649, 653 (1947). Accord, Inman v. Baltimore & Ohio R. Co., 361 U. S. 138, 140 (1959); Wilkerson, supra, at 61. And while "[w]hat constitutes negligence for the statute's purposes is a federal question," Urie, 337 U. S., at 174, we have made clear that this federal question generally turns on principles of common law: "[T]he Federal Employers' Liability Act is founded on common-law concepts of negligence and injury, subject to such qualifications as Congress has imported into those terms," id., at 182. Those qualifications, discussed above,
543
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