Cite as: 511 U. S. 531 (1994)
Opinion of the Court
the fraudulent transfer provision of the Bankruptcy Code requires a foreclosure sale to yield a certain minimum price beyond what state foreclosure law requires, is to say, in essence, that the Code has adopted Durrett or Bundles. Surely Congress has the power pursuant to its constitutional grant of authority over bankruptcy, U. S. Const., Art. I, § 8, cl. 4, to disrupt the ancient harmony that foreclosure law and fraudulent conveyance law, those two pillars of debtor-creditor jurisprudence, have heretofore enjoyed. But absent clearer textual guidance than the phrase "reasonably equivalent value"—a phrase entirely compatible with preexisting practice—we will not presume such a radical departure. See United Sav. Assn. of Tex. v. Timbers of Inwood Forest Associates, Ltd., 484 U. S. 365, 380 (1988); Midlantic Nat. Bank v. New Jersey Dept. of Environmental Protection, 474 U. S. 494, 501 (1986); cf. United States v. Texas, 507 U. S. 529, 534 (1993) (statutes that invade common law must be read with presumption favoring retention of long-established principles absent evident statutory purpose to the contrary).7
7 We are unpersuaded by petitioner's argument that the 1984 amendments to the Bankruptcy Code codified the Durrett rule. Those amendments expanded the definition of "transfer" to include "foreclosure of the debtor's equity of redemption," 11 U. S. C. § 101(54) (1988 ed., Supp. IV), and added the words "voluntarily or involuntarily" as modifiers of the term "transfer" in § 548(a). The first of these provisions establishes that foreclosure sales fall within the general definition of "transfers" that may be avoided under several statutory provisions, including (but not limited to) § 548. See § 522(h) (transfers of exempt property), § 544 (transfers voidable under state law), § 547 (preferential transfers), § 549 (postpetition transfers). The second of them establishes that a transfer may be avoided as fraudulent even if it was against the debtor's will. See In re Madrid, 725 F. 2d 1197, 1199 (CA9 1984) (preamendment decision holding that a foreclosure sale is not a "transfer" under § 548). Neither of these consequences has any bearing upon the meaning of "reasonably equivalent value" in the context of a foreclosure sale.
Nor does our reading render these amendments "superfluous," as the dissent contends, post, at 555. Prior to 1984, it was at least open to ques-
543
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