Cite as: 512 U. S. 573 (1994)
Opinion of the Court
"By a familiar canon of interpretation, heretofore applied by this court whenever Congress . . . has borrowed from the statutes of a State provisions which had received in that State a known and settled construction before their enactment by Congress, that construction must be deemed to have been adopted by Congress together with the text which it expounded, and the provisions must be construed as they were understood at the time in the State."
See also Carolene Products Co. v. United States, 323 U. S. 18, 26 (1944) ("[T]he general rule [is] that adoption of the wording of a statute from another legislative jurisdiction carries with it the previous judicial interpretations of the wording"); Cathcart v. Robinson, 5 Pet. 264, 280 (1831). The canon of interpretation upon which Shannon relies, however, is merely a "presumption of legislative intention" to be invoked only "under suitable conditions." Carolene Products, supra, at 26. We believe that the "conditions" are not "suitable" in this case. Indeed, although Congress may have had the District of Columbia Code in mind when it passed the IDRA, see United States v. Crutchfield, 893 F. 2d 376, 378 (CADC 1990), it did not, in the language of Hof, "borrow" the terms of the IDRA from the District of Columbia Code. Rather, Congress departed from the scheme embodied in D. C. Code Ann. § 24-301 in several significant ways. The IDRA, for example, requires a defendant at trial to
prove insanity by clear and convincing evidence, 18 U. S. C. § 17(b); the District of Columbia statute, by contrast, employs a preponderance standard, D. C. Code Ann. § 24-301( j). A commitment hearing must be held under the IDRA within 40 days of an NGI verdict, 18 U. S. C. § 4243(c); the period is 50 days under the District of Columbia scheme, D. C. Code Ann. § 24-301(d)(2)(A). Under the IDRA, a defendant whose offense involved bodily injury to another or serious damage to another's property, or the substantial risk thereof, must demonstrate at the hearing by clear and convincing evi-
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