Cite as: 523 U. S. 155 (1998)
Opinion of the Court
not appear in the relevant federal enactment. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 27 ("[I]n the great majority of cases the question of whether the State law offense has been made punishable by an enactment of Congress can be resolved by asking, is there a Federal statute that contains precisely the same essential elements as the State statute"). But this interpretation of federal "enactments" is too narrow.
The Government's view of the "precise acts" test—which comes close to a "precise elements" test—would have the ACA assimilate state law even where there is no gap to fill. Suppose, for example, that state criminal law (but not federal criminal law) makes possession of a state bank charter an element of an offense it calls "bank robbery"; or suppose that state law makes purse snatching criminal under a statute that is indistinguishable from a comparable federal law but for a somewhat different definition of the word "purse." Where, one might ask, is the gap? As Congress has enacted more and more federal statutes, including many that are applicable only to federal enclaves, see, e. g., 18 U. S. C. § 113 (assault); § 1460 (possession with intent to sell obscene materials), such possibilities become more realistic. And to that extent the Government's broad view of assimilation threatens not only to fill nonexistent gaps, but also to rewrite each federal enclave-related criminal law in 50 different ways, depending upon special, perhaps idiosyncratic, drafting circumstances in the different States. See Williams, 327 U. S., at 718 (ACA may not be used to "enlarg[e] . . . modif[y] or repea[l] existing provisions of the Federal Code"). It would also leave residents of federal enclaves randomly subject to three sets of criminal laws (special federal territorial criminal law, general federal criminal law, and state criminal law) where their state counterparts would be subject only to the latter two types.
Nothing in the Act's language or in its purpose warrants imposing such narrow limits upon the words "any enactment" and thereby so significantly broadening the statute's
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