Federal preemption of state tort lawsuits (especially products liability and negligence lawsuits) has concerned the Supreme Court in recent decades. Since 1992, the Court has decided at least sixteen cases involving this issue. The Roberts Court alone has handed down six such cases with the two most recent having just been decided in the 2010 term. The large number of cases has spurred discussion of the Roberts Court’s “keen interest in preemption battles.” More important than the number of cases, however, is that the Roberts Court has come to accept a particular view of tort lawsuits in its preemption decisions—one that envisions such lawsuits not as vehicles to redress “wrongs done by private parties to private parties‛ but rather as merely arm[s] of the public regulatory state.” This regulatory view of tort lawsuits may eventually affect the outcome of the Court’s preemption decisions.