Cite as: 525 U. S. 155 (1999)
Opinion of the Court
ment's construction of Article 24 is most faithful to the Convention's text, purpose, and overall structure.
A
The cardinal purpose of the Warsaw Convention, we have observed, is to "achiev[e] uniformity of rules governing claims arising from international air transportation." Floyd, 499 U. S., at 552; see Zicherman, 516 U. S., at 230. The Convention signatories, in the treaty's preamble, specifically "recognized the advantage of regulating in a uniform manner the conditions of . . . the liability of the carrier." 49 Stat. 3014. To provide the desired uniformity, Chapter III of the Convention sets out an array of liability rules which, the treaty declares, "apply to all international transportation of persons, baggage, or goods performed by aircraft." Ibid. In that Chapter, the Convention describes and defines the three areas of air carrier liability (personal injuries in Article 17, baggage or goods loss, destruction, or damage in Article 18, and damage occasioned by delay in Article 19), the conditions exempting air carriers from liability (Article 20), the monetary limits of liability (Article 22), and the circumstances in which air carriers may not limit liability (Articles 23 and 25). See supra, at 162-163, and n. 7. Given the Convention's comprehensive scheme of liability rules and its textual emphasis on uniformity, we would be hard put to conclude that the delegates at Warsaw meant to subject air carriers to the distinct, nonuniform liability rules of the individual signatory nations.
The Court of Appeals looked to our precedent for guidance on this point, but it misperceived our meaning. It misread our decision in Zicherman to say that the Warsaw Convention expresses no compelling interest in uniformity that would warrant preempting an otherwise applicable body of law, here New York tort law. See 122 F. 3d, at 107; supra, at 166. Zicherman acknowledges that the Convention cen-
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