# Patterson v. Shumate > Supreme Court of the United States · June 15, 1992 · 504 U.S. 753 URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9432594 ## Case - **Full name:** Patterson, Trustee v. Shumate - **Court:** Supreme Court of the United States - **Decided:** June 15, 1992 - **Citations:** 504 U.S. 753; 112 S. Ct. 2242; 119 L. Ed. 2d 519; 1992 U.S. LEXIS 3546 - **Precedential status:** Published - **Opinion:** Concurrence by Scalia - **Judges:** Blackmun, Scalia - **Cited by:** 849 later opinions in the Frix Law Library ## Citator (automated) - No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases. - Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9432594 ## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction) - finding an ERISA qualified pension plan containing a provision that “[n]o benefit, right or interest of any participant shall be subject to anticipation, alienation, sale, transfer, assignment, pledge, encumbrance or charge, seizure, attachment or other legal, equitable or oth… - stating that section 541(c)(2) of the Bankruptcy Code excludes from property of the estate pension plans subject to transfer restrictions that are enforceable under nonbankruptcy law; IRA’s cannot be excluded from property of the estate under section 541(c)(2) because they lac… - holding that Bankruptcy Code and ERISA establish that the anti-alienation provision in qualified pension plan constitutes restriction on transfer enforceable under “applicable nonbank-ruptcy law” for purposes of 11 U.S.C. § 541(c)(2) - finding that the anti-alienation provision contained in an ERISA-qualified pension plan constituted a restriction on transfer enforceable under applicable nonbankruptcy law; therefore the plan was excluded from bankruptcy estate - holding that ERISA-qualified pension plans, as well as IRAs created pursuant to 26 U.S.C. § 408, may be excluded from the property of the bankruptcy estate pursuant to 11 U.S.C. § 541(c)(2) ## Opinion text Justice Scalia, concurring. The Court’s opinion today, which I join, prompts several observations. When the phrase “applicable nonbankruptcy law” is considered in isolation, the phenomenon that three Courts of Appeals could have thought it a synonym for “state law” is mystifying. When the phrase is considered together with the rest of the Bankruptcy Code (in which Congress chose to refer to state law as, logically enough, “state law”), the phenomenon calls into question whether our legal culture has so far departed from attention to text, or is so lacking in agreed-upon methodology for creating and interpreting text, that it any longer makes sense to talk of “a government of laws, not of men.” Speaking of agreed-upon methodology: It is good that the Court’s analysis today proceeds on the assumption that use of the phrases “state law” and “applicable nonbankruptcy law” in other provisions of the Bankruptcy Code is highly relevant to whether “applicable nonbankruptcy law” means “state law” in § 541(c)(2), since consistency of usage within the same statute is to be presumed. Ante, at 758, and n. 2. This application of a normal and obvious principle of statutory construction would not merit comment, except that we explicitly rejected it, in favor of a. one-subsection-at-a-time approach, when interpreting another provision of this very statute earlier this Term. See Dewsnup v. Timm, 502 U. S. 410, 416-417 (1992); id., at 420-423 (Scalia, J., dissenting). “[W]e express no. opinion,” our decision said, “as to whether the words [at issue] have different meaning in other provisions of the Bankruptcy Code.” Id., at 417, n. 3 . I trust *767 that in our search for a neutral and rational interpretive methodology we have now come to rest, so that the symbol of our profession may remain the scales, not the seesaw. --- Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9432594. Public record. Not legal advice.