Cite as: 529 U. S. 861 (2000)
Opinion of the Court
Court did not hold that the Safety Act does create a "special burden," or still less that such a burden necessarily arises from the limits of an express pre-emption provision. And considerations of language, purpose, and administrative workability, together with the principles underlying this Court's pre-emption doctrine discussed above, make clear that the express pre-emption provision imposes no unusual, "special burden" against pre-emption. For similar reasons, we do not see the basis for interpreting the saving clause to impose any such burden.
A "special burden" would also promise practical difficulty by further complicating well-established pre-emption principles that already are difficult to apply. The dissent does not contend that this "special burden" would apply in a case in which state law penalizes what federal law requires—i. e., a case of impossibility. See post, at 892-893, n. 6, 900, n. 16. But if it would not apply in such a case, then how, or when, would it apply? This Court, when describing conflict preemption, has spoken of pre-empting state law that "under the circumstances of th[e] particular case . . . stands as an obstacle to the accomplishment and execution of the full purposes and objectives of Congress"—whether that "obstacle" goes by the name of "conflicting; contrary to; . . . repugnance; difference; irreconcilability; inconsistency; violation; curtailment; . . . interference," or the like. Hines v. Davidowitz, 312 U. S. 52, 67 (1941); see Jones v. Rath Packing Co., 430 U. S. 519, 526 (1977). The Court has not previously driven a legal wedge—only a terminological one—between "conflicts" that prevent or frustrate the accomplishment of a federal objective and "conflicts" that make it "impossible" for private parties to comply with both state and federal law. Rather, it has said that both forms of conflicting state law are "nullified" by the Supremacy Clause, De la Cuesta, 458 U. S., at 152-153; see Locke, ante, at 109; English v. General Elec. Co., 496 U. S. 72, 78-79 (1990), and it has assumed that Congress would not want either kind of conflict. The Court
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