578
Kennedy, J., concurring
Orations of Daniel Webster 227-272 (E. Whipple ed. 1879), and the debates over the Civil Rights Acts, see Hearings on S. 1732 before the Senate Committee on Commerce, 88th Cong., 1st Sess., pts. 1-3 (1963), some Congresses have accepted responsibility to confront the great questions of the proper federal balance in terms of lasting consequences for the constitutional design. The political branches of the Government must fulfill this grave constitutional obligation if democratic liberty and the federalism that secures it are to endure.
At the same time, the absence of structural mechanisms to require those officials to undertake this principled task, and the momentary political convenience often attendant upon their failure to do so, argue against a complete renunciation of the judicial role. Although it is the obligation of all officers of the Government to respect the constitutional design, see Public Citizen v. Department of Justice, 491 U. S. 440, 466 (1989); Rostker v. Goldberg, 453 U. S. 57, 64 (1981), the federal balance is too essential a part of our constitutional structure and plays too vital a role in securing freedom for us to admit inability to intervene when one or the other level of Government has tipped the scales too far.
In the past this Court has participated in maintaining the federal balance through judicial exposition of doctrines such as abstention, see, e. g., Younger v. Harris, 401 U. S. 37 (1971); Railroad Comm'n of Tex. v. Pullman Co., 312 U. S. 496 (1941); Burford v. Sun Oil Co., 319 U. S. 315 (1943), the rules for determining the primacy of state law, see, e. g., Erie R. Co. v. Tompkins, 304 U. S. 64 (1938), the doctrine of adequate and independent state grounds, see, e. g., Murdock v. Memphis, 20 Wall. 590 (1875); Michigan v. Long, 463 U. S. 1032 (1983), the whole jurisprudence of pre-emption, see, e. g., Rice v. Santa Fe Elevator Corp., 331 U. S. 218 (1947); Cipollone v. Liggett Group, Inc., 505 U. S. 504 (1992), and many of the rules governing our habeas jurisprudence, see, e. g., Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U. S. 722 (1991); McCleskey
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