Cite as: 511 U. S. 485 (1994)
Souter, J., dissenting
ratified" the interpretation). Accordingly, absent clear indication that Congress intended to preclude all challenges during sentencing to prior convictions relied upon for enhancement, the ACCA must be read as permitting such challenges.
B
The Court fails to identify any language in the ACCA affirmatively precluding collateral attacks on prior convictions during sentencing, as there is none. Instead, the Court hears a clear message in the statutory silence, but I find none of its arguments persuasive. The Court first invokes 18 U. S. C. § 921(a)(20), under which a conviction "which has been expunged, or set aside or for which a person has been pardoned or has had civil rights restored shall not be considered a conviction for purposes of this chapter." According to the Court, this "exemption clause" (as we have elsewhere called it, see Beecham v. United States, ante, at 369, "creates a clear negative implication that courts may count a conviction that has not been set aside," ante, at 491. Expressio unius, in other words, est exclusio alterius.
Even if the premise of the Court's argument is correct,4 the bridge the Court crosses to reach its conclusion is notoriously unreliable and does not bear the weight here. While "often a valuable servant," the maxim that the inclusion of something negatively implies the exclusion of everything else (expressio unius, etc.) is "a dangerous master to follow in the construction of statutes." Ford v. United States, 273 U. S. 593, 612 (1927) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). It rests on the assumption that all omissions in
4 Despite the Court's unstated assumption to the contrary, a sentencing court that finds a prior conviction to have been unconstitutionally obtained can be said to have "set aside" the conviction for purposes of the sentencing, a reading that squares better than the Court's with the evident purpose of the exemption clause (as well as the statute that added it to § 921(a)(20), the "Firearm Owner's Protection Act") of disregarding convictions that do not fairly and reliably demonstrate a person's bad character.
501
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