stating in relation to the surplusage canon that "canons of construction are no more than rules of thumb that help courts determine the meaning of legislation, and in interpreting a statute a court should always turn first to one, cardinal canon before all others. We have stated time and again that courts must presume that a legislature says in a statute what it means and means in a statute what it says there. When the words of a statute are unambiguous, then, this first canon is also the last: judicial inquiry is complete."
How later courts described this case
- stating in relation to the surplusage canon that "canons of construction are no more than rules of thumb that help courts determine the meaning of legislation, and in interpreting a statute a court should always turn first to one, cardinal canon before all others. We have stated time and again that courts must presume that a legislature says in a statute what it means and means in a statute what it says there. When the words of a statute are unambiguous, then, this first canon is also the last: judicial inquiry is complete."
- explaining that canons of construction, like the canon against surplusage, "are no more than rules of thumb that help courts determine the meaning of legislation, and in interpreting a statute a court should always turn first to one, cardinal canon before all others," the canon "that courts must presume that a legislature says in a statute what it means and means in a statute what it says there"
- Stating that the “cardinal canon” of statutory interpretation is that courts “must presume that a legislature says in a statute what it means and means in a statute what it says there... .When the words of a statute are unambiguous, then, this first canon is also the last: ‘judicial inquiry is complete.’ ” (citation omitted)
- finding that the statute governing appellate jurisdiction for bankruptcy cases does not preclude interlocutory appeals under 28 U.S.C. section 1292, because “so long as there is no ‘positive repugnancy’ between two laws, ... a court must give effect to both.”
Written by the judges who cited it.
Later courts went against this
Questioned by Stanley v. Crossland (In re Lakeshore Village Resort, Ltd.), 81 F.3d 103 (1996)
Ltd. v. Nichols (In re Nichols), 21 F.3d 690, 692 n. 8 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, - U.S. -, 115 S.Ct. 422, 130 L.Ed.2d 337 (1994); Vylene, 968 F.2d at 892, 894; but see Bonner Mall, 2 F.3d at 904 n. 11 (stating in dicta that “nothing in Germain casts doubt upon the liberal standard for finality we have adopted regarding § 158(d)”).
Questioned by Congrejo Investments, LLC v. Mann, 586 F.3d 1159 (2009)
(Germain), the Supreme Court cast doubt on our application of a flexible standard to section 158(d), by reasoning that sections 158(d) and 1291 were coextensive in their application to district courts acting as bankruptcy appellate courts. 503 U.S. 249, 253, 112 S.Ct. 1146, 117 L.Ed.2d 391 (1992).
The opinion
*255 Justice Stevens,
concurring in the judgment.
Whenever there is some uncertainty about the meaning of a statute, it is prudent to examine its legislative history. 1 In this case, such an examination is appropriate because petitioner’s interpretation of 28 U. S. C. § 158 (d) creates an unusual overlap with 28 U. S. C. § 1291 .
Rejecting petitioner’s position, the Court of Appeals concluded that in enacting the current system of bankruptcy appeals, Congress limited the scope of § 1292(b), excluding review by the courts of appeals of certain interlocutory bankruptcy orders. If Congress had intended such a significant change in the scheme of appellate jurisdiction, some indication of this purpose would almost certainly have found its way into the legislative history. The legislative record, however, contains no mention of an intent to limit the scope of § 1292(b). This silence tends to support the conclusion that no such change was intended. 2
Accordingly, notwithstanding the inferences drawn by the Court of Appeals, the legislative history is not only consist *256 ent with petitioner’s interpretation of the statute, but also actually supports it. For this reason, and because I agree with the Court’s textual analysis, I concur in its judgment.
See Wisconsin Public Intervenor v. Mortier 501 U. S. 597, 611, n. 4 (1991) (“[Clommon sense suggests that inquiry benefits from reviewing additional information rather than ignoring it”). As Judge Learned Hand advised, statutes “should be construed, not as theorems of Euclid, but with some imagination of the purposes which lie behind them.” Lehigh Valley Coal Co. v. Yensavage, 218 F. 547, 553 (CA2 1914), cert. denied, 235 U. S. 705 (1915). Legislative history helps to illuminate those purposes.
See American Hospital Assn. v. NLRB, 499 U. S. 606, 613-614 (1991); Edmonds v. Compagnie Generate Transatlantique, 443 U. S. 256, 266-267 (1979); see also Harrison v. PPG Industries, Inc., 446 U. S. 578, 602 (1980) (Rehnquist, J., dissenting) (“In a case where the construction of legislative language such as this makes so sweeping and so relatively unorthodox a change as that made here, I think judges as well as detectives may take into consideration the fact that a watchdog did not bark in the night”). Similarly, Justice Frankfurter’s scholarly observation concerning the interpretation of a statutory text also applies to the analysis of legislative history: “One must... listen attentively to what it does not say.” Frankfurter, Some Reflections on the Reading of Statutes, 47 Colum. L. Rev. 527 , 536 (1947).