486 U.S. 717 (1988)

SUN OIL CO.
v.
WORTMAN ET AL.

No. 87-352.

Supreme Court of United States.

Argued March 22, 1988 Decided June 15, 1988 CERTIORARI TO THE SUPREME COURT OF KANSAS

*718 Gerald Sawatzky argued the cause for petitioner. With him on the briefs were Jim H. Goering, Timothy B. Mustaine, and Edwyn R. Sherwood.

*719 Gordon Penny argued the cause for respondents. With him on the briefs were W. Luke Chapin and Stephen Jones.^[*]

JUSTICE SCALIA delivered the opinion of the Court.

Petitioner Sun Oil Company seeks reversal of a decision of the Supreme Court of Kansas that it is liable for interest on certain previously suspended gas royalties. Wortman v. Sun Oil Co., 241 Kan. 226, 755 P. 2d 488 (1987) (Wortman III). The Kansas Supreme Court rejected petitioner's contentions that (1) the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the Constitution, Art. IV, § 1, and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibited application of Kansas' statute of limitations so as to allow to proceed in Kansas courts a suit barred by the statute of limitations of the State whose substantive law governs the claim, and (2) those same Clauses of the Constitution mandated interpretations of other States' substantive laws concerning interest that were different from those arrived at by the Kansas courts. We granted certiorari. 484 U. S. 912 (1987).

I

In the 1960's and 1970's, petitioner, a Delaware corporation with its principal place of business in Texas, extracted gas from properties that it leased from respondents. The leases provided that respondents would receive a royalty, usually one-eighth of the proceeds, from the sale of gas. Petitioner sold the gas in interstate commerce at prices that had to be approved by the Federal Power Commission (FPC). The FPC permitted petitioner on several occasions to collect proposed increased prices from customers pending final approval, but required petitioner to refund with interest any amount so collected that was not ultimately approved. Specifically, petitioner had on file with the FPC an undertaking *720 to comply with regulations, now codified at 18 CFR § 154.102 (1987), requiring petitioner to refund any ultimately unapproved increase plus interest at certain specified rates. § 154.102(c). Petitioner made no royalty payments to respondents on the increased amounts collected until the FPC approved the increases. The respondents' royalty shares of these increases have been called "suspended royalty payments" in this litigation.

In July 1976, petitioner paid respondents $1,167,000 in suspended royalty payments after the FPC approved increases that had been collected from July 1974 through April 1976. These payments covered 670 properties, 43.7% of which were located in Texas, 24% in Oklahoma, and 22.8% in Louisiana. In April 1978, petitioner paid respondents $2,676,000 in suspended royalty payments after the FPC approved increases that had been collected from December 1976 through April 1978. These payments covered 690 properties, 40.3% located in Texas, 31.6% in Oklahoma, and 23.6% in Louisiana.

In August 1979, respondents Richard Wortman and Hazel Moore filed a class action in a Kansas trial court on behalf of all landowners to whom petitioner had made or should have made suspended royalty payments, seeking interest on those payments for the period that the payments were held and used by petitioner. The trial court ruled that Kansas law governed all claims for interest, even claims relating to leases in another State and brought by residents of that State. The court further ruled that under Kansas law petitioner was liable for prejudgment interest at the rates petitioner had agreed to pay with respect to customer refunds under the FPC regulations. These rates were 7% per annum prior to October 10, 1974; 9% from then until September 30, 1979; and thereafter the average prime rate compounded quarterly. The trial court relied on Shutts v. Phillips Petroleum Co., 222 Kan. 527, 567 P. 2d 1292 (1977) (Shutts I), cert. denied, 434 U. S. 1068 (1978). That case, which also involved suspended royalty payments, had held that Kansas law governed *721 the claims of residents of other States concerning properties in those States, and that under Kansas law (1) the royalty owners were entitled to interest on suspended royalty payments because the royalty payments became owing under the royalty contract at the moment the gas company's customers paid the increases and (2) the interest rate to be used was that set forth in the FPC regulations because the gas company's corporate undertaking with the FPC constituted an agreement to pay that rate. See 222 Kan., at 562-565, 567 P. 2d, at 1317-1319.

The principles of Shutts I were reaffirmed in Shutts v. Phillips Petroleum Co., 235 Kan. 195, 679 P. 2d 1159 (1984) (Shutts II), a factually similar case involving suspended royalty payments different from those in Shutts I. The original decision of the trial court in this case was then affirmed on the strength of Shutts II in Wortman v. Sun Oil Co., 236 Kan. 266, 690 P. 2d 385 (1984) (Wortman I). The losing gas companies in both cases petitioned this Court for certiorari.

We reversed that part of Shutts II which held that Kansas could apply its substantive law to claims by residents of other States concerning properties located in those States, and remanded that case to the Kansas Supreme Court for application of the governing law of the other States to those claims. Phillips Petroleum Co. v. Shutts, 472 U. S. 797, 816-823 (1985) (Shutts III). We also vacated the decision in Wortman I and remanded it for reconsideration in light of our decision in Shutts III. Sun Oil Co. v. Wortman, 474 U. S. 806 (1985) (Wortman II).

On the remand in this case, the trial court held that under the law of the other States that had been held by Shutts III to govern the vast majority of claims, petitioner was liable for interest at the rate specified in the FPC regulations. The trial court further held that nothing in Shutts III precluded the application of Kansas' 5-year statute of limitations to these claims, and that therefore claims for interest on the suspended royalty payments made in July 1976 were timely. *722 The Kansas Supreme Court agreed with the first of these holdings in Shutts v. Phillips Petroleum Co., 240 Kan. 764, 732 P. 2d 1286 (1987) (Shutts IV), cert. pending, No. 87-348. The decision that the other States' pertinent substantive legal rules were consistent with those of Kansas was reaffirmed in Wortman III, the decision we now review. Wortman III also held that this Court's decision in Shutts III applied only to substantive law, and not to procedural matters such as the appropriate statute of limitations.

II

This Court has long and repeatedly held that the Constitution does not bar application of the forum State's statute of limitations to claims that in their substance are and must be governed by the law of a different State. See, e. g., Wells v. Simonds Abrasive Co., 345 U. S. 514, 516-518 (1953); Townsend v. Jemison, 9 How. 407, 413-420 (1850); McElmoyle v. Cohen, 13 Pet. 312, 327-328 (1839). We granted certiorari to reexamine this issue. We conclude that our prior holdings are sound.

A

The Full Faith and Credit Clause provides:

"Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof."

The Full Faith and Credit Clause does not compel "a state to substitute the statutes of other states for its own statutes dealing with a subject matter concerning which it is competent to legislate." Pacific Employers Ins. Co. v. Industrial Accident Comm'n, 306 U. S. 493, 501 (1939). Since the procedural rules of its courts are surely matters on which a State is competent to legislate, it follows that a State may apply its own procedural rules to actions litigated in its courts. The issue here, then, can be characterized as whether a statute of *723 limitations may be considered as a procedural matter for purposes of the Full Faith and Credit Clause.

Petitioner initially argues that McElmoyle v. Cohen, supra, was wrongly decided when handed down. The holding of McElmoyle, that a statute of limitations may be treated as procedural and thus may be governed by forum law even when the substance of the claim must be governed by another State's law, rested on two premises, one express and one implicit. The express premise was that this reflected the rule in international law at the time the Constitution was adopted. This is indisputably correct, see Le Roy v. Crowninshield, 15 F. Cas. 362, 365, 371 (No. 8,269) (Mass. 1820) (Story, J.) (collecting authorities), and is not challenged by petitioner. The implicit premise, which petitioner does challenge, was that this rule from international law could properly have been applied in the interstate context consistently with the Full Faith and Credit Clause.

The first sentence of the Full Faith and Credit Clause was not much discussed at either the Constitutional Convention or the state ratifying conventions. However, the most pertinent comment at the Constitutional Convention, made by James Wilson of Pennsylvania, displays an expectation that would be interpreted against the background of principles developed in international conflicts law. See 2 M. Farrand, The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, p. 488 (rev. ed. 1966). Moreover, this expectation was practically inevitable, since there was no other developed body of conflicts law to which courts in our new Union could turn for guidance.^[1]

*724 The reported state cases in the decades immediately following ratification of the Constitution show that courts looked without hesitation to international law for guidance in resolving the issue underlying this case: which State's law governs the statute of limitations. The state of international law on that subject being as we have described, these early decisions uniformly concluded that the forum's statute of limitations governed even when it was longer than the limitations period of the State whose substantive law governed the merits of the claim. See Nash v. Tupper, 1 Cai. 402, 412-413 (N. Y. 1803) (citing unreported 1795 New York case, *725 Page v. Cable, holding the same); Pearsall v. Dwight, 2 Mass. 84, 89-90 (1806); Ruggles v. Keeler, 3 Johns. 263, 267-268 (N. Y. 1808) (Kent, C. J.); Graves v. Graves's Executor, 5 Ky. 207, 208-209 (1810). By 1820, the use of the forum statute of limitations in the interstate context was acknowledged to be "well settled." Medbury v. Hopkins, 3 Conn. 472, 473 (1820); accord, Le Roy v. Crowninshield, supra, at 371 ("settled"); cf. McCluny v. Silliman, 3 Pet. 270, 276-277 (1830) ("well settled"); Hawkins v. Barney's Lessee, 5 Pet. 457, 466 (1831) ("not to be questioned"). Obviously, judges writing in the era when the Constitution was framed and ratified thought the use of the forum statute of limitations to be proper in the interstate context. Their implicit understanding that the Full Faith and Credit Clause did not preclude reliance on the international law rule carries great weight.

Moreover, this view of statutes of limitations as procedural for purposes of choice of law followed quite logically from the manner in which they were treated for domestic-law purposes. At the time the Constitution was adopted the rule was already well established that suit would lie upon a promise to repay a debt barred by the statute of limitations — on the theory, as expressed by many courts, that the debt constitutes consideration for the promise, since the bar of the statute does not extinguish the underlying right but merely causes the remedy to be withheld. See Little v. Blunt, 26 Mass. 488, 492 (1830) ("[T]he debt remained, the remedy was gone"); see also Wetzell v. Bussard, 11 Wheat. 309, 311 (1826). This is the same theory, of course, underlying the conflicts rule: the right subsists, and the forum may choose to allow its courts to provide a remedy, even though the jurisdiction where the right arose would not. See Graves v. Graves's Executor, supra, at 208-209 ("The statute of limitations. . . does not destroy the right but withholds the remedy. It would seem to follow, therefore, that the lex fori, *726 and not the lex loci was to prevail with respect to the time when the action should be commenced").

The historical record shows conclusively, we think, that the society which adopted the Constitution did not regard statutes of limitations as substantive provisions, akin to the rules governing the validity and effect of contracts, but rather as procedural restrictions fashioned by each jurisdiction for its own courts. As Chancellor Kent explained in his landmark work, 2 J. Kent, Commentaries on American Law 462-463 (2d ed. 1832): "The period sufficient to constitute a bar to the litigation of sta[l]e demands, is a question of municipal policy and regulation, and one which belongs to the discretion of every government, consulting its own interest and convenience."

Unable to sustain the contention that under the original understanding of the Full Faith and Credit Clause statutes of limitations would have been considered substantive, petitioner argues that we should apply the modern understanding that they are so. It is now agreed, petitioner argues, that the primary function of a statute of limitations is to balance the competing substantive values of repose and vindication of the underlying right; and we should apply that understanding here, as we have applied it in the area of choice of law for purposes of federal diversity jurisdiction, where we have held that statutes of limitations are substantive, see Guaranty Trust Co. v. York, 326 U. S. 99 (1945).

To address the last point first: Guaranty Trust itself rejects the notion that there is an equivalence between what is substantive under the Erie doctrine and what is substantive for purposes of conflict of laws. 326 U. S., at 108. Except at the extremes, the terms "substance" and "procedure" precisely describe very little except a dichotomy, and what they mean in a particular context is largely determined by the purposes for which the dichotomy is drawn. In the context of our Erie jurisprudence, see Erie R. Co. v. Tompkins, 304 U. S. 64 (1938), that purpose is to establish (within the limits *727 of applicable federal law, including the prescribed Rules of Federal Procedure) substantial uniformity of predictable outcome between cases tried in a federal court and cases tried in the courts of the State in which the federal court sits. See Guaranty Trust, supra, at 109; Hanna v. Plumer, 380 U. S. 460, 467, 471-474 (1965). The purpose of the substance-procedure dichotomy in the context of the Full Faith and Credit Clause, by contrast, is not to establish uniformity but to delimit spheres of state legislative competence. How different the two purposes (and hence the appropriate meanings) are is suggested by this: It is never the case under Erie that either federal or state law — if the two differ — can properly be applied to a particular issue, cf. Erie, supra, at 72-73; but since the legislative jurisdictions of the States overlap, it is frequently the case under the Full Faith and Credit Clause that a court can lawfully apply either the law of one State or the contrary law of another, see Shutts III, 472 U. S., at 823 ("[I]n many situations a state court may be free to apply one of several choices of law"). Today, for example, we do not hold that Kansas must apply its own statute of limitations to a claim governed in its substance by another State's law, but only that it may.

But to address petitioner's broader point of which the Erie argument is only a part — that we should update our notion of what is sufficiently "substantive" to require full faith and credit: We cannot imagine what would be the basis for such an updating. As we have just observed, the words "substantive" and "procedural" themselves (besides not appearing in the Full Faith and Credit Clause) do not have a precise content, even (indeed especially) as their usage has evolved. And if one consults the purpose of their usage in the full-faith-and-credit context, that purpose is quite simply to give both the forum State and other interested States the legislative jurisdiction to which they are entitled. If we abandon the currently applied, traditional notions of such entitlement we would embark upon the enterprise of constitutionalizing *728 choice-of-law rules, with no compass to guide us beyond our own perceptions of what seems desirable.^[2] There is no more reason to consider recharacterizing statutes of limitation as substantive under the Full Faith and Credit Clause than there is to consider recharacterizing a host of other matters generally treated as procedural under conflicts law, and hence generally regarded as within the forum State's legislative jurisdiction. See, e. g., Restatement (Second) of Conflict of Laws § 131 (remedies available), § 133 (placement of burden of proof), § 134 (burden of production), § 135 (sufficiency of the evidence), § 139 (privileges) (1971).

In sum, long established and still subsisting choice-of-law practices that come to be thought, by modern scholars, unwise, *729 do not thereby become unconstitutional. If current conditions render it desirable that forum States no longer treat a particular issue as procedural for conflict of laws purposes, those States can themselves adopt a rule to that effect, e. g., Heavner v. Uniroyal, Inc., 63 N. J. 130, 135-141, 305 A. 2d 412, 415-418 (1973) (statute of limitations), or it can be proposed that Congress legislate to that effect under the second sentence of the Full Faith and Credit Clause, cf. Mills v. Duryee, 7 Cranch 481, 485 (1813); Pacific Employers Ins. Co. v. Industrial Accident Comm'n, 306 U. S., at 502. It is not the function of this Court, however, to make departures from established choice-of-law precedent and practice constitutionally mandatory. We hold, therefore, that Kansas did not violate the Full Faith and Credit Clause when it applied its own statute of limitations.

B

Petitioner also makes a due process attack upon the Kansas court's application of its own statute of limitations.^[3]*730 Here again neither the tradition in place when the constitutional provision was adopted nor subsequent practice supports the contention. At the time the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted, this Court had not only explicitly approved (under the Full Faith and Credit Clause) forum-state application of its own statute of limitations, but the practice had gone essentially unchallenged. And it has gone essentially unchallenged since. "If a thing has been practised for two hundred years by common consent, it will need a strong case for the Fourteenth Amendment to affect it." Jackman v. Rosenbaum Co., 260 U. S. 22, 31 (1922).

A State's interest in regulating the workload of its courts and determining when a claim is too stale to be adjudicated certainly suffices to give it legislative jurisdiction to control the remedies available in its courts by imposing statutes of limitations. Moreover, petitioner could in no way have been unfairly surprised by the application to it of a rule that is as old as the Republic. There is, in short, nothing in Kansas' action here that is "arbitrary or unfair," Shutts III, 472 U. S., at 821-822, and the due process challenge is entirely without substance.

III

In Shutts III, we held that Kansas could not apply its own law to claims for interest by nonresidents concerning royalties from property located in other States. The Kansas Supreme Court has complied with that ruling, but petitioner claims that it has unconstitutionally distorted Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana law in its determination of that law made in Shutts IV and applied to this case in Wortman III.

To constitute a violation of the Full Faith and Credit Clause or the Due Process Clause, it is not enough that a *731 state court misconstrue the law of another State. Rather, our cases make plain that the misconstruction must contradict law of the other State that is clearly established and that has been brought to the court's attention. See, e. g., Pennsylvania Fire Ins. Co. v. Gold Issue Mining & Milling Co., 243 U. S. 93, 96 (1917); Western Life Indemnity Co. v. Rupp, 235 U. S. 261, 275 (1914); Louisville & Nashville R. Co. v. Melton, 218 U. S. 36, 51-52 (1910); Banholzer v. New York Life Ins. Co., 178 U. S. 402, 408 (1900); see also Shutts III, supra, at 834-842 (STEVENS, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). We cannot conclude that any of the interpretations at issue here runs afoul of this standard.

1. Texas: Petitioner contests the Kansas Supreme Court's interpretation of Texas law on the interest rate. Texas' statutory rate of 6% does not apply when a "specified rate of interest is agreed upon by the parties." Tex. Rev. Civ. Stat. Ann., Art. 5069-1.03 (Vernon 1987). Such an agreement need not be express, but can be inferred from conduct. See Preston Farm & Ranch Supply, Inc. v. Bio-Zyme Enterprises, 625 S. W. 2d 295, 298, 300 (Tex. 1981). The Kansas court held an agreement to pay interest at a higher rate was implied by petitioner's undertaking with the FPC to comply with federal regulations setting forth the applicable rates of interest for refundable moneys held in suspense. See Shutts IV, 240 Kan., at 777, 783-784, 790-791, 732 P. 2d, at 1298, 1302, 1306; see also Shutts I, 222 Kan., at 562-565, 567 P. 2d, at 1317-1319.

Petitioner brought to the Kansas court's attention no Texas decision clearly indicating that an agreement to pay interest at a specified rate would not be implied in these circumstances.^[4] Petitioner's reliance on Phillips Petroleum *732 Co. v. Stahl Petroleum Co., 569 S. W. 2d 480 (Tex. 1978), is misplaced. Although that case was similar to the present one on its facts, the point at issue here was neither raised nor decided. In Stahl, the intermediate Texas court had ordered interest paid at the statutory 6% rate. There is nothing *733 to indicate, however, that the royalty owner had requested anything else, and only the lessee and not the royalty owner appealed. Id., at 481. Thus, the Texas Supreme Court's holding that 6% interest was payable is in no way a holding that more than 6% was not. It is far from unconstitutional for the Kansas Supreme Court to anticipate that the Texas Supreme Court would distinguish the case on the eminently reasonable ground that no rate of interest based on an implied agreement was at issue.

2. Oklahoma: Petitioner contests the Kansas Supreme Court's interpretations of Oklahoma law as to both liability for interest and the rate to be paid. Concerning liability, petitioner relies on a statute providing that "[a]ccepting payment of the whole principal, as such, waives all claim to interest." Okla. Stat., Tit. 23, § 8 (1981). But the Oklahoma Supreme Court has held that this statute does not bar a claim for interest based on an implied agreement to pay interest, since in that event the interest becomes, for purposes of the statute, part of the "principal" owed. See Webster Drilling Co. v. Sterling Oil of Oklahoma, Inc., 376 P. 2d 236, 238 (1962). Regarding the rate of interest, Oklahoma law provides for 6% only "in the absence of any contract as to the rate of interest, and by contract the parties may agree to any rate as may be authorized by law." Okla. Stat., Tit. 15, § 266 (1981). Thus, for Oklahoma as for Texas, petitioner's contention founders on the fact that it pointed to no decision indicating that an agreement to pay more than 6% interest would not be implied in circumstances such as those of the present case.

3. Louisiana: Finally, petitioner contests the Kansas Supreme Court's interpretation of Louisiana law both as to liability for interest and the rate to be paid. Concerning liability, petitioner relies on Whitehall Oil Co. v. Boagni, 217 So. 2d 707 (La. App. 1968), aff'd on other issues, 255 La. 67, 229 So. 2d 702 (1969). That case involved a situation opposite from that involved here: the gas companies had paid the *734 royalties on increased prices before FPC approval, and were seeking interest on those payments when the approval did not ensue. It thus involved a claim for unjust enrichment, see 217 So. 2d, at 709, and does not stand for the proposition that no interest is recoverable on a contractual debt — which would arguably (if not inevitably) have been governed by the Louisiana statute mandating interest on "[a]ll debts . . . from the time they become due." La. Civ. Code Ann., Art. 1938 (West 1977); see also Wurzlow v. Placid Oil Co., 279 So. 2d 749, 772-774 (La. App.) (applying Art. 1938 to oil and gas royalties), cert. denied, 282 So. 2d 140 (La. 1973).

As to petitioner's claim that if interest was payable Louisiana's 7% rate clearly applied: The 7% rate specified in the above-quoted statute applied "unless otherwise stipulated." Art. 1938. Petitioner brought to the Kansas court's attention no Louisiana decision indicating that an implied agreement could not constitute such a stipulation, or that an implied agreement would not be found in the circumstances of this case. Cf. Boutte v. Chevron Oil Co., 316 F. Supp. 524, 531 (ED La. 1970) (dictum) (gas company will owe royalty owner interest at FPC rates on suspended royalty payments once FPC approves increases), aff'd, 442 F. 2d 1337 (CA5 1971).

* * *

For the reasons stated, the judgment of the Kansas Supreme Court is

Affirmed.

JUSTICE KENNEDY took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.

JUSTICE BRENNAN, with whom JUSTICE MARSHALL and JUSTICE BLACKMUN join, concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.

I join Parts I and III of the Court's opinion. Although I also agree with the result the Court reaches in Part II, I *735 reach that result through a somewhat different path of analysis.

For 150 years, this Court has consistently held that a forum State may apply its own statute of limitations period to out-of-state claims even though it is longer or shorter than the limitations period that would be applied by the State out of which the claim arose. See Wells v. Simonds Abrasive Co., 345 U. S. 514 (1953) (shorter); Townsend v. Jemison, 9 How. 407 (1850) (longer); McElmoyle v. Cohen, 13 Pet. 312 (1839) (shorter). The main question presented in this case is whether this line of authority has been undermined by more recent case law concerning the constitutionality of state choice-of-law rules.^[1] See Phillips Petroleum Co. v. Shutts, 472 U. S. 797 (1985); Allstate Ins. Co. v. Hague, 449 U. S. 302 (1981). I conclude that it has not.

I start, as did the Court in Wells, by emphasizing that "[t]he Full Faith and Credit Clause does not compel a state to adopt any particular set of rules of conflict of laws; it merely sets certain minimum requirements which each state must observe when asked to apply the law of a sister state." 345 U. S., at 516. The minimum requirements imposed by the Full Faith and Credit Clause^[2] are that a forum State should not apply its law unless it has " `a significant contact or significant aggregation of contacts, creating state interests, such that choice of its law is neither arbitrary nor fundamentally unfair.' " Phillips Petroleum, supra, at 818, quoting *736 Allstate, supra, at 312-313 (plurality opinion of BRENNAN, J., joined by WHITE, MARSHALL, and BLACKMUN, JJ.). The constitutional issue in this case is somewhat more complicated than usual because the question is not the typical one of whether a State can constitutionally apply its substantive law where both it and another State have certain contacts with the litigants and the facts underlying the dispute. Rather the question here is whether a forum State can constitutionally apply its limitations period, which has mixed substantive and procedural aspects, where its contacts with the dispute stem only from its status as the forum.

Were statutes of limitations purely substantive, the issue would be an easy one, for where, as here, a forum State has no contacts with the underlying dispute, it has no substantive interests and cannot apply its own law on a purely substantive matter. Nor would the issue be difficult if statutes of limitations were purely procedural, for the contacts a State has with a dispute by virtue of being the forum always create state procedural interests that make application of the forum's law on purely procedural questions "neither arbitrary nor fundamentally unfair." Phillips Petroleum, supra, at 818. Statutes of limitations, however, defy characterization as either purely procedural or purely substantive. The statute of limitations a State enacts represents a balance between, on the one hand, its substantive interest in vindicating substantive claims and, on the other hand, a combination of its procedural interest in freeing its courts from adjudicating stale claims and its substantive interest in giving individuals repose from ancient breaches of law. A State that has enacted a particular limitations period has simply determined that after that period the interest in vindicating claims becomes outweighed by the combination of the interests in repose and avoiding stale claims. One cannot neatly categorize this complicated temporal balance as either procedural or substantive.

*737 Given the complex of interests underlying statutes of limitations, I conclude that the contact a State has with a claim simply by virtue of being the forum creates a sufficient procedural interest to make the application of its limitations period to wholly out-of-state claims consistent with the Full Faith and Credit Clause. This is clearest when the forum State's limitations period is shorter than that of the claim State. A forum State's procedural interest in avoiding the adjudication of stale claims is equally applicable to in-state and out-of-state claims. That the State out of which the claim arose may have concluded that at that shorter period its substantive interests outweigh its procedural interest in avoiding stale claims would not make any difference; it would be " `neither arbitrary nor fundamentally unfair,' " Phillips Petroleum, supra, at 818, for the forum State to conclude that its procedural interest is more weighty than that of the claim State and requires an earlier time bar, as long as the time bar applied in a nondiscriminatory manner to in-state and out-of-state claims alike.

The constitutional question is somewhat less clear where, as here, the forum State's limitations period is longer than that of the claim State. In this situation, the claim State's statute of limitations reflects its policy judgment that at the time the suit was filed the combination of the claim State's procedural interest in avoiding stale claims and its substantive interest in repose outweighs its substantive interest in vindicating the plaintiff's substantive rights. Assuming, for the moment, that each State has an equal substantive interest in the repose of defendants, then a forum State that has concluded that its procedural interest is less weighty than that of the claim State does not act unfairly or arbitrarily in applying its longer limitations period. The claim State does not, after all, have any substantive interest in not vindicating rights it has created. Nor will it do to argue that the forum State has no interest in vindicating the substantive rights of nonresidents: the forum State cannot discriminate against *738 nonresidents, and if it has concluded that the substantive rights of its citizens outweigh its procedural interests at that period then it cannot be faulted for applying that determination evenhandedly.

If the different limitations periods also reflect differing assessments of the substantive interests in the repose of defendants, however, the issue is more complicated. It is, to begin with, not entirely clear whether the interest in the repose of defendants is an interest the State has as a forum or wholly as the creator of the claim at issue. Even if one assumes the latter, determining whether application of the forum State's longer limitations period would thwart the claim State's substantive interest in repose requires a complex assessment of the relative weights of both States' procedural and substantive interests. For example, a claim State may have a substantive interest in vindicating claims that, at a particular period, outweighs its substantive interest in repose standing alone but not the combination of its interests in repose and avoiding the adjudication of stale claims. Such a State would not have its substantive interest in repose thwarted by the claim's adjudication in a State that professed no procedural interest in avoiding stale claims, even if the forum State had less substantive interest in repose than the claim State, because the forum State would be according the claim State's substantive interests all the weight the claim State gives them. Such efforts to break down and weigh the procedural and substantive components and interests served by the various States' limitations periods would, however, involve a difficult, unwieldy and somewhat artificial inquiry that itself implicates the strong procedural interest any forum State has in having administrable choice-of-law rules.

In light of the forum State's procedural interests and the inherent ambiguity of any more refined inquiry in this context, there is some force to the conclusion that the forum State's contacts give it sufficient procedural interests to make it " `neither arbitrary nor fundamentally unfair,' " Phillips Petroleum, *739 472 U. S., at 818, for the State to have a per se rule of applying its own limitations period to out-of-state claims — particularly where, as here, the States out of which the claims arise view their statutes of limitations as procedural. See ante, at 729-730, n. 3. The issue, after all, is not whether the decision to apply forum limitations law is wise as a matter of choice-of-law doctrine but whether the decision is within the range of constitutionally permissible choices, Wells,