United States Nat. Bank of Ore. v. Independent Ins. Agents of America, Inc., 508 U.S. 439, 22 (1993)

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460

UNITED STATES NAT. BANK OF ORE. v. INDEPENDENT INS. AGENTS OF AMERICA, INC.

Opinion of the Court

serve Act that granted banks the authority to discount and rediscount. Use of "this Act" in the discount-and-rediscount paragraph is powerful proof that the 1916 Act placed that paragraph in the Act to which it necessarily refers, the Federal Reserve Act. That is crucial because section 92 travels together with the paragraphs that surround it; neither the language nor, certainly, the punctuation of the 1916 Act justifies separating them. Because the 1916 Act placed the paragraph preceding section 92 in § 13 of the Federal Reserve Act, it follows that the 1916 Act placed section 92 there too.

We are not persuaded by respondents' argument that the term "this Act" in the discount-and-rediscount paragraph is an antecedent reference to "the Federal reserve Act," which is mentioned in the prior paragraph (in the fifth exception clause of Rev. Stat. § 5202). 39 Stat. 753; see also 38 Stat. 264 (1913 Act). If respondents are right, then the 1916 Act may be read as placing the discount-and-rediscount paragraph (and section 92, which necessarily accompanies it) in Rev. Stat. § 5202. But while the antecedent interpretation is arguable as construing "this Act" in the discount-andrediscount paragraph, that reading cannot attach to the other uses of "this Act" in the 1916 Act, see 39 Stat. 752, 753, 754, since none is within the vicinity of a reference to the Federal Reserve Act. Presumptively, " 'identical words used in different parts of the same act are intended to have the same meaning,' " Commissioner v. Keystone Consol. Industries, Inc., ante, at 159 (quoting Atlantic Cleaners & Dyers, Inc. v. United States, 286 U. S. 427, 433 (1932)), and since nothing rebuts that presumption here, we are of the view that each use of "this Act" in the 1916 Act refers to the Act in which the language is contained. Rather than aiding respondents, then, the single full reference to "the Federal reserve Act" in the portion of the 1916 Act that amended Rev. Stat. § 5202 cuts against them. The fact that it was not repeated in the next paragraph confirms that the statute's quotation of Rev. Stat. § 5202 had ended.

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