6. Are there limits to the federal court’s lawmaking power? See Kramer, The Lawmaking Power of the Federal Courts, 12 Pace L. Rev. 263, 269 (1992). One view is that federal common law should be reserved for use in specialized enclaves that implicate strong federal interests.

See Friendly, The Gap in Lawmaking—Judges Who Can’t and Legislators Who Won’t, 63 Colum. L. Rev. 787 (1963). Other commentators argue that federal common law can be developed whenever a federal court can “point to a federal enactment, constitutional or statutory, that it interprets as authorizing the federal common483law rule.”

See Field, Sources of Law: The Scope of Federal Common Law, 99 Harv. L. Rev. 881, 883–92

(1986).