Cite as: 511 U. S. 244 (1994)
Scalia, J., concurring in judgments
Aluminum & Chemical Corp. v. Bonjorno, 494 U. S. 827, 840 (1990) (Scalia, J., concurring). The Court, however, is willing to let that clear statement be supplied, not by the text of the law in question, but by individual legislators who participated in the enactment of the law, and even legislators in an earlier Congress which tried and failed to enact a similar law. For the Court not only combs the floor debate and Committee Reports of the statute at issue, the Civil Rights Act of 1991 (1991 Act), Pub. L. 102-166, 105 Stat. 1071, see ante, at 262-263, but also reviews the procedural history of an earlier, unsuccessful, attempt by a different Congress to enact similar legislation, the Civil Rights Act of 1990, S. 2104, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (1990), see ante, at 255-257, 263.
This effectively converts the "clear statement" rule into a "discernible legislative intent" rule—and even that under-states the difference. The Court's rejection of the floor statements of certain Senators because they are "frankly partisan" and "cannot plausibly be read as reflecting any general agreement," ante, at 262, reads like any other exercise in the soft science of legislative historicizing,1 undisciplined by any distinctive "clear statement" requirement. If it is a "clear statement" we are seeking, surely it is not enough to insist that the statement can "plausibly be read as reflecting general agreement"; the statement must clearly reflect general agreement. No legislative history can do that, of course, but only the text of the statute itself. That has been the meaning of the "clear statement" retroactivity rule from the earliest times. See, e. g., United States v. Heth, 3 Cranch 399, 408 (1806) (Johnson, J.) ("Unless, therefore, the words are too imperious to admit of a different construction, [the Court should] restric[t] the words of the law to a future
1 In one respect, I must acknowledge, the Court's effort may be unique. There is novelty as well as irony in its supporting the judgment that the floor statements on the 1991 Act are unreliable by citing Senator Dan-forth's floor statement on the 1991 Act to the effect that floor statements on the 1991 Act are unreliable. See ante, at 262-263, n. 15.
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