Cite as: 523 U. S. 155 (1998)
Opinion of the Court
eral legislation"). See also Franklin, 216 U. S., at 568 (assimilation proper only where state laws "not displaced by specific laws enacted by Congress").
There are too many different state and federal criminal laws, applicable in too many different kinds of circumstances, bearing too many different relations to other laws, to common-law tradition, and to each other, for a touchstone to provide an automatic general answer to this second question. Still, it seems fairly obvious that the Act will not apply where both state and federal statutes seek to punish approximately the same wrongful behavior—where, for example, differences among elements of the crimes reflect jurisdictional, or other technical, considerations, or where differences amount only to those of name, definitional language, or punishment. See, e. g., United States v. Adams, 502 F. Supp. 21, 25 (SD Fla. 1980) (misdemeanor/felony difference did not justify assimilation).
The Act's basic purpose makes it similarly clear that assimilation may not rewrite distinctions among the forms of criminal behavior that Congress intended to create. Williams, supra, at 717-718 (nothing in the history or language of the ACA to indicate that once Congress has "defined a penal offense, it has authorized such definition to be enlarged" by state law). Hence, ordinarily, there will be no gap for the Act to fill where a set of federal enactments taken together make criminal a single form of wrongful behavior while distinguishing (say, in terms of seriousness) among what amount to different ways of committing the same basic crime.
At the same time, a substantial difference in the kind of wrongful behavior covered (on the one hand by the state statute, on the other, by federal enactments) will ordinarily indicate a gap for a state statute to fill—unless Congress, through the comprehensiveness of its regulation, cf. Wisconsin Public Intervenor v. Mortier, 501 U. S. 597, 604-605 (1991), or through language revealing a conflicting policy, see
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