882
Opinion of the Court
67; see also Ouellette, 479 U. S., at 493; De la Cuesta, 458 U. S., at 156 (finding conflict and pre-emption where state law limited the availability of an option that the federal agency considered essential to ensure its ultimate objectives).
Petitioners ask this Court to calculate the precise size of the "obstacle," with the aim of minimizing it, by considering the risk of tort liability and a successful tort action's incentive-related or timing-related compliance effects. See Brief for Petitioners 45-50. The dissent agrees. Post, at 900-905. But this Court's pre-emption cases do not ordinarily turn on such compliance-related considerations as whether a private party in practice would ignore state legal obligations—paying, say, a fine instead—or how likely it is that state law actually would be enforced. Rather, this Court's pre-emption cases ordinarily assume compliance with the state-law duty in question. The Court has on occasion suggested that tort law may be somewhat different, and that related considerations—for example, the ability to pay damages instead of modifying one's behavior—may be relevant for pre-emption purposes. See Goodyear Atomic Corp. v. Miller, 486 U. S. 174, 185 (1988); Cipollone, 505 U. S., at 536-539 (Blackmun, J., concurring in part, concurring in judgment in part, and dissenting in part); see also English, 496 U. S., at 86; Silkwood v. Kerr-McGee Corp., 464 U. S. 238, 256 (1984). In other cases, the Court has found tort law to conflict with federal law without engaging in that kind of an analysis. See, e. g., Ouellette, supra, at 494-497; Kalo Brick, 450 U. S., at 324-332. We need not try to resolve these differences here, however, for the incentive or compliance considerations upon which the dissent relies cannot, by themselves, change the legal result. Some of those considerations rest on speculation, see, e. g., post, at 901 (predicting risk of "no airbag" liability and manufacturers' likely response to such liability); some rest in critical part upon the dissenters' own view of FMVSS 208's basic purposes—a view
Page: Index Previous 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007