under this rule, harlan concluded that the issue was not yet ripe for federal action. federal courts, he wrote, should not address the constitutionality of state laws, especially those laws which were new or open to reasonable interpretation, until state courts had a reasonable period of time to interpret them. to meet this test, the supreme court had to determine whether the laws in question could be reasonably interpreted in more than one way. harlan said that there was reasonable room for alternative legal construction by state courts. state courts, he said, needed to generate a complete record (which included the possibility of limiting interpretation) so that federal courts could more accurately rule on the issues raised.