Cite as: 511 U. S. 485 (1994)
Souter, J., dissenting
sion" law, and to correct an oversight that had resulted in the omission of exemption language from one of two parallel provisions. See S. Rep. No. 98-583, supra, at 7; H. R. Rep. No. 99-495, p. 20 (1986). In amending § 921(a)(20), Congress was not addressing the question of where, in the course of federal litigation, a conviction could be challenged. Indeed, the legislative history of the amendment reveals no hint of any intention at all with respect to § 924(e)'s sentence-enhancement provision, but rather an exclusive focus on the federal firearms disability in § 922. Cf. Miles v. Illinois Central R. Co., 315 U. S. 698, 714-715 (1942) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting) (relying on legislative history to counter a negative implication from a statute's text). As a result, the Court's argument by negative implication from § 921(a)(20)'s exemption clause must fail. The fact that Congress in the exemption clause expressly precluded reliance upon unconstitutional convictions that have been set aside simply does not reveal an intent with respect to § 924(e) to require reliance at sentencing on unconstitutional convictions that have not yet been set aside.
The Court's second statutory argument also seeks to establish congressional intent through negative implication, but is no more successful. The Court observes that Congress in other statutes expressly permitted challenges to prior convictions during sentencing, see ante, at 491-493 (citing 21 U. S. C. § 851(c)(2) and 18 U. S. C. § 3575(e)), which is said to show that "when Congress intended to authorize collateral attacks on prior convictions at the time of sentencing, it knew how to do so," ante, at 492. But surely the Court does not believe that, if Congress intended to preclude collateral attacks on prior convictions at the time of sentencing, it did not know how to do that. And again, the Court's effort to infer intent from the statutory silence runs afoul of the context of the statute's enactment; within a legal framework forbidding sentencing on the basis of prior convictions a de-
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