462
Opinion of the Court
Against the overwhelming evidence from the structure, language, and subject matter of the 1916 Act there stands only the evidence from the Act's punctuation, too weak to trump the rest. In these unusual cases, we are convinced that the placement of the quotation marks in the 1916 Act was a simple scrivener's error, a mistake made by someone unfamiliar with the law's object and design. Courts, we have said, should "disregard the punctuation, or repunctuate, if need be, to render the true meaning of the statute." Hammock v. Loan & Trust Co., 105 U. S. 77, 84-85 (1882) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). The true meaning of the 1916 Act is clear beyond question, and so we repunctuate. The 1916 Act should be read as if closing quotation marks do not appear at the end of the paragraph before the phrase Section fifty-two hundred and two of the Revised Statutes of the United States is hereby amended so as to read as follows, 39 Stat. 753, and as if the opening quotation marks that immediately follow that phrase instead precede it. Accordingly, the 1916 Act placed within § 13 of the Federal Reserve Act each of the paragraphs between the phrases that introduce the amendments to §§ 13 and 14 of the Federal Reserve Act, including the paragraph that was later codified as 12 U. S. C. § 92. Because the 1918 Act did not amend the Federal Reserve Act, it did not repeal
add the exception from Rev. Stat. § 5202's indebtedness limit for "[l]iabili-ties incurred under the provisions of the Federal Reserve Act" immediately after the language in the Federal Reserve Act that could result in the liabilities of concern, language that authorized national banks to accept certain drafts and bills of exchange. 38 Stat. 264. And the 1916 Congress could conceivably have found it similarly convenient to amend Rev. Stat. § 5202, which appeared in the Act it was amending at the time. The point of our analysis, however, is not that Congress could not possibly have amended Rev. Stat. § 5202 in the middle of the 1916 Act, but that the best reading of the Act, despite the punctuation marks, is that Congress did something else.
Page: Index Previous 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007