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We turn to the evolution of the term “unpaid losses”, taking
into account the taxation of insurance companies in general and
the authorities that Congress had before it at the time it added
the term to section 201 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1939 in
section 163(a) of the Revenue Act of 1942 (1942 Act), ch. 619, 56
Stat. 798, 867. Whereas respondent asks the Court to ascertain
Congress' intent for the relevant provisions of the 1942 Act by
considering legislation that was enacted 40 and more years
thereafter, we limit our analysis of that intent to the materials
which were before Congress in 1942. “It is emphatically the
province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law
is”, Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137, 177 (1803); see
also United States v. American Trucking Associations, Inc., supra
at 544, and the views of one Congress as to the meaning of prior
legislation have little bearing on a court's furtherance of that
duty, see Consumer Prod. Safety Commn. v. GTE Sylvania, Inc.,
supra at 117-118; Haynes v. United States, 390 U.S. 85, 87 n.4
(1968); United States v. Philadelphia Natl. Bank, 374 U.S. 321,
348-349 (1963); United States v. United Mine Workers, 330 U.S.
258, 281-282 (1947); see also United States v. Price, 361 U.S.
304, 313 (1960) (“the views of a subsequent Congress form a
hazardous basis for inferring the intent of an earlier one”).
Such is especially true in the instant case where few of the
legislators who voted on the subsequent legislation in the 1980's
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