Cite as: 518 U. S. 938 (1996)
Stevens, J., dissenting
The Pennsylvania court has in these and other cases expressly indicated its intent to extend the protections of its Constitution beyond those available under the Federal Constitution, see, e. g., Commonwealth v. Edmunds, 526 Pa. 374, 586 A. 2d 887 (1991) (setting forth test for establishing rights under Pennsylvania Constitution); Commonwealth v. Rosen-felt, 443 Pa. Super. 616, 634-637, 662 A. 2d 1131, 1140-1141 (1995) (reviewing state cases extending greater protections under the Pennsylvania Constitution). The per curiam decision that the Court issues today merely makes that task harder by requiring the Commonwealth to purge its decisions of any reliance on the latter, despite the value of the insights that our decisions can provide on related issues of law. By "unceremoniously reversing its judgment," Van Arsdall, 475 U. S., at 701 (Stevens, J., dissenting), we also demonstrate a lack of respect for the Pennsylvania court and the sophistication of its state search and seizure law. See id., at 699.
These harms are particularly unnecessary given the likely result on remand. To reinvigorate the privacy protections extended to Pennsylvania citizens under Labron, Kilgore, and White, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court need only set forth the appropriate talismanic language and state, even more clearly than it already has, that the "Commonwealth's jurisprudence of the automobile exception [requires] both the existence of probable cause and the presence of exigent circumstances to justify a warrantless search." Labron, 543 Pa., at 100, 669 A. 2d, at 924 (emphasis added).8 While the
8 State courts have, of course, done this on many occasions in the past. See, e. g., Ponte v. Real, 471 U. S. 491, 503, n. 4 (1985) (Stevens, J., concurring in part) (listing various cases in which reversals by this Court were followed by state-court decisions affirming the original holding on state-law grounds); Montana v. Hall, 481 U. S. 400, 411 (1987) (per curiam) (Stevens, J., dissenting) (same).
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