Gustafson v. Alloyd Co., 513 U.S. 561, 38 (1995)

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598

GUSTAFSON v. ALLOYD CO.

Ginsburg, J., dissenting

§ 3 than in § 1 of the Sherman Act, see id., at 433-435, and explained:

"Undoubtedly, there is a natural presumption that identical words used in different parts of the same act are intended to have the same meaning. . . . But the presumption is not rigid and readily yields whenever there is such variation in the connection in which the words are used as reasonably to warrant the conclusion that they were employed in different parts of the act with different intent. . . .

"It is not unusual for the same word to be used with different meanings in the same act, and there is no rule of statutory construction which precludes the courts from giving to the word the meaning which the legislature intended it should have in each instance." Id., at 433.

See also Cook, "Substance" and "Procedure" in the Conflict of Laws, 42 Yale L. J. 333, 337 (1933) ("The tendency to assume that a word which appears in two or more legal rules, and so in connection with more than one purpose, has and should have precisely the same scope in all of them, runs all through legal discussions. It has all the tenacity of original sin and must constantly be guarded against.").

According "prospectus" discrete meanings in § 10 and § 12(2) is consistent with Congress' specific instruction in § 2 that definitions apply "unless the context otherwise requires," 15 U. S. C. § 77b. As the Court of Appeals construed the Act, § 2(10)'s definition of "prospectus" governs § 12(2), which accommodates without strain the definition's broad reach; by contrast, the specific context of § 10 requires a correspondingly specific reading of "prospectus."

Indeed, in the Investment Company Act of 1940, Congress explicitly recognized that the Securities Act uses "prospectus" in two different senses—one in § 10, and another in the rest of the Act:

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