Cite as: 523 U. S. 57 (1998)
Opinion of the Court
discharge for judgments in civil actions for " 'willful and malicious injuries to the person or property of another' "? Id., at 480. The Tinker Court held such an award a nondis-chargeable debt. The Kawaauhaus feature certain statements in the Tinker opinion, in particular: "[An] act is willful . . . in the sense that it is intentional and voluntary" even if performed "without any particular malice," id., at 485; an act that "necessarily causes injury and is done intentionally, may be said to be done willfully and maliciously, so as to come within the [bankruptcy discharge] exception," id., at 487. See also id., at 486 (the statute exempts from discharge liability for " 'a wrongful act, done intentionally, without just cause or excuse' ") (quoting from definition of malice in Bromage v. Prosser, 4 Barn. & Cress. 247, 107 Eng. Rep. 1051 (K. B. 1825)).
The exposition in the Tinker opinion is less than crystalline. Counterbalancing the portions the Kawaauhaus emphasize, the Tinker Court repeatedly observed that the tort in question qualified in the common law as trespassory. Indeed, it ranked as "trespass vi et armis." 193 U. S., at 482, 483. Criminal conversation, the Court noted, was an action akin to a master's "action of trespass and assault . . . for the battery of his servant," id., at 482. Tinker thus placed criminal conversation solidly within the traditional intentional tort category, and we so confine its holding. That decision, we clarify, provides no warrant for departure from the current statutory instruction that, to be nondischargeable, the judgment debt must be "for willful and malicious injury."
Subsequent decisions of this Court are in accord with our construction. In McIntyre v. Kavanaugh, 242 U. S. 138 (1916), a broker "deprive[d] another of his property forever by deliberately disposing of it without semblance of authority." Id., at 141. The Court held that this act constituted an intentional injury to property of another, bringing it within the discharge exception. But in Davis v. Aetna Ac-
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