244
Opinion of O'Connor, J.
on a party who has violated a contractual obligation. We reiterated in Norfolk & Western that "[t]he obligation of a contract is the law which binds the parties to perform their agreement." 499 U. S., at 129 (internal quotation marks omitted); see also Sturges v. Crowninshield, 4 Wheat. 122, 197 (1819) (Marshall, C. J.) ("A contract is an agreement, in which a party undertakes to do, or not to do, a particular thing. The law binds him to perform his undertaking, and this is, of course, the obligation of his contract"). We therefore read the words "all other law" in the statutory exemption broadly enough to "suspen[d] application of the law that makes the contract binding." Norfolk & Western, supra, at 130. I would give the words "any law" in § 1305 a similar reading.
As support for its theory, the Court cites only a statement in the plurality opinion in Cipollone v. Liggett Group, Inc., 505 U. S. 504 (1992); see ante, at 229. The Cipollone plurality said that "a common-law remedy for a contractual commitment voluntarily undertaken should not be regarded as a 'requirement . . . imposed under State law' within the meaning of § 5(b)." 505 U. S., at 526. But the plurality elaborated on this point in a footnote. In rejecting the argument that specific warranty obligations are "imposed under State law," the plurality agreed that pre-emption might be required "if the Act pre-empted 'liability' imposed under state law . . . ; but instead the Act expressly pre-empts only a 'requirement or prohibition' imposed under state law." Id., at 526, n. 24. It agreed that contractual requirements are "only enforceable under state law," but argued that those requirements are " 'imposed' by the contracting party upon itself." Ibid. The plurality thus distinguished the situation where substantive requirements contained in a contract are enforceable only under state law from the situation where state law itself imposes substantive requirements, and concluded that the statute before it pre-empted only the latter kind of state law. Here, as in Cipollone, the requirements
Page: Index Previous 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007