and then last term in a case called reeg alversus medtronic, justice stephens concurred in the opinion and pointed out why it really didn't undermine the previous opinions he'd written. then this term comes along and he has the majority vote in these cases. so if you're a practitioner -- and i argued a couple of these cases -- you have no idea what's going to happen with preemption unless you can figure out some way to persuade enough justices that they will outweigh justice stevens because he's written on every one of these cases. i have one final point. a lot depends upon what the agency does. the obama administration, the president issued an executive order instructing agencies basically to go through all of their regulations and scrub them clean of any ambiguities, in other words, only preemption, don't write regulations saying your conduct here preements the state tort suits unless it's fairly cleemplet so those regulations will affect what the future decisions are going to be. >> john, you wand to jump in on this? >> yes. i'd just follow up on ted's point. i think it is very cruc

medtronic it was a pro-preemption opinion, but justice stevens didn't like it but concurred and pointed out why it didn't undermine the previous opinions he had written. and then this term comes along, and he has the majority vote in these cases. if you're a practitioner, and i argued a couple of these cases, you have no idea what's going to happen with preemption unless you can figure out some way to persuade enough somewheresties somewheresties -- justices to outway justice stevens. and i'll make one final point. >> okay. >> the obama administration, the president issued an executive order instructing agencies to go through all of their regulations and scrub them clean of any ambiguities. in other words, don't write regulations saying your conduct here preempts the state tort suits unless it's fairly clear. so those will be, those regulations will affect what the future decisions are going to be. >> john, you wanted to jump in on this. >> yes, so i'd just follow up on ted's point. i think it is very crucial to understand what the agencies are doing because in some respect both of thes