Cite as: 511 U. S. 368 (1994)
Opinion of the Court
the Fourth Circuit held, the choice-of-law clause applies to the exemption clause, then we must look to whether Beecham's and Jones' civil rights were restored under federal law (the law of the jurisdiction in which the earlier proceedings were held). On the other hand, if, as the Eighth and Ninth Circuits concluded, the two clauses ought to be read separately, see Geyler, supra, at 1334-1335; Edwards, supra, at 1349-1350, then we would have to come up with a special choice-of-law principle for the exemption clause.
We think the Fourth Circuit's reading is the better one. Throughout the statutory scheme, the inquiry is: Does the person have a qualifying conviction on his record? Section 922(g) imposes a disability on people who "ha[ve] been convicted." The choice-of-law clause defines the rule for determining "[w]hat constitutes a conviction." The exemption clause says that a conviction for which a person has had civil rights restored "shall not be considered a conviction." Asking whether a person has had civil rights restored is thus just one step in determining whether something should "be considered a conviction." By the terms of the choice-of-law clause, this determination is governed by the law of the convicting jurisdiction.
This interpretation is supported by the fact that the other three procedures listed in the exemption clause—pardons, expungements, and set-asides—are either always or almost always (depending on whether one considers a federal grant of habeas corpus to be a "set-aside," a question we do not now decide) done by the jurisdiction of conviction. That several items in a list share an attribute counsels in favor of interpreting the other items as possessing that attribute as well. Dole v. Steelworkers, 494 U. S. 26, 36 (1990); Third Nat. Bank in Nashville v. Impac Limited, Inc., 432 U. S. 312, 322 (1977); Jarecki v. G. D. Searle & Co., 367 U. S. 303, 307 (1961). Though this canon of construction is by no means a hard and fast rule, it is a factor pointing toward the Fourth Circuit's construction of the statute.
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