264
White, J., dissenting
Because I do not believe that the statutory language requires this result and because we have elsewhere recognized the anomaly of construing ERISA in a way that "would afford less protection to employees and their beneficiaries than they enjoyed before ERISA was enacted," Firestone, supra, at 114 (emphasis added), I must dissent.
I
Concerned that many pension plans were being corruptly or ineptly mismanaged and that American workers were losing their financial security in retirement as a result, Congress in 1974 enacted ERISA, "declar[ing] [it] to be the policy of [the statute] to protect . . . the interests of participants in employee benefit plans and their beneficiaries, by requiring the disclosure and reporting to participants and beneficiaries of financial and other information with respect [to the plans], by establishing standards of conduct, responsibility, and obligation for fiduciaries of employee benefit plans, and by providing for appropriate remedies, sanctions, and ready access to the Federal courts." 29 U. S. C. § 1001(b).
As we have noted previously, "ERISA's legislative history confirms that the Act's fiduciary responsibility provisions, 29 U. S. C. §§ 1101-1114, 'codif[y] and mak[e] applicable to [ERISA] fiduciaries certain principles developed in the evolution of the law of trusts.' " Firestone, supra, at 110 (quoting H. R. Rep. No. 93-533, p. 11 (1973)). ERISA, we have explained, "abounds with the language and terminology of trust law" and must be construed against the background of the common law of trusts. Firestone, supra, at 110-111; see also Central States, Southeast and Southwest Areas Pension Fund v. Central Transport, Inc., 472 U. S. 559, 570-571 (1985). Indeed, absent some express statutory departure— such as ERISA's broader definition of a responsible "fiduciary," see ante, at 262—Congress intended that the courts would look to the settled experience of the common law in giving shape to a " 'federal common law of rights and obligations under ERISA-regulated plans.' " Firestone, supra, at
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