Incorporated State Law‪.‬

ABSTRACT In the familiar case of Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins, the Supreme Court held that the Constitution forbade the federal courts from generating a body of general common law and required them instead to apply state substantive law when adjudicating many common-law causes of action. A rich body of scholarly literature and case law has developed to analyze the Erie doctrine and to guide federal courts in interpreting and applying state law when the litigants assert causes of action that have their source in state law (e.g., when a federal court is exercising diversity or supplemental jurisdiction). But those are not the only cases that call upon federal courts to apply state law; rather, state law is often connected to federal law in a way that necessitates its adjudication in federal court. Notably, federal courts must interpret and apply state law that has been incorporated into federal statutes and federal common law. Such "incorporated" state law has received little attention from scholars, but it should be of significant interest because it arises routinely, and the federal court applying incorporated state law is not bound by the Erie imperative to apply state law accurately. This Article seeks to focus attention on the subject of incorporated state law and to explore the potential challenges that it might present.