Cite as: 512 U. S. 79 (1994)
Opinion of the Court
avoid the conclusion that § 1821(d)(2)(A)(i) places the FDIC in the shoes of the insolvent S&L, to work out its claims under state law, except where some provision in the extensive framework of FIRREA provides otherwise. To create additional "federal common-law" exceptions is not to "supplement" this scheme, but to alter it.
We have thought it necessary to resolve the effect of FIRREA because respondent argued that the statute not only did not prevent but positively authorized federal common law. We are reluctant to rest our judgment on FIRREA alone, however, since that statute was enacted into law in 1989, while respondent took over as receiver for ADSB in 1986. The FDIC is willing to "assume . . . that FIRREA would have taken effect in time to be relevant to this case," Brief for Respondent 35, n. 21, but it is not self-evident that that assumption is correct. See Landgraf v. USI Film Products, 511 U. S. 244, 268-270, 274 (1994); cf. id., at 290-291 (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment). It seems to us imprudent to resolve the retroactivity question without briefing, and inefficient to pretermit the retroactivity issue on the basis of the FDIC's concession, since that would make our decision of limited value in other cases. As we proceed to explain, even assuming the inapplicability of FIRREA this is not one of those cases in which judicial creation of a special federal rule would be justified.
Such cases are, as we have said in the past, "few and restricted," Wheeldin v. Wheeler, 373 U. S. 647, 651 (1963), limited to situations where there is a "significant conflict between some federal policy or interest and the use of state law." Wallis v. Pan American Petroleum Corp., 384 U. S. 63, 68 (1966). Our cases uniformly require the existence of such a conflict as a precondition for recognition of a federal rule of decision. See, e. g., Kamen v. Kemper Financial Services, Inc., 500 U. S. 90, 98 (1991); Boyle, supra, at 508; Kimbell Foods, 440 U. S., at 728. Not only the permissibility but also the scope of judicial displacement of state rules
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