718
Rehnquist, C. J., dissenting
Chief Justice Rehnquist, with whom Justice O'Connor and Justice Souter join, dissenting.
The bankruptcy trustee objected to the discharge of petitioner, a voluntary bankrupt, believing that he had filed false information. The trustee filed a complaint under 11 U. S. C. § 727, alleging petitioner stored a well-drilling machine at his residence; petitioner answered by denying the allegation "for the reason that it is untrue." App. 12, ¶ 10. The trustee also alleged in a separate motion that petitioner had, despite requests, failed to turn over all the books and records relating to the bankruptcy estate. Petitioner filed a response denying the allegation, and asserting that he had produced the requested documents at the behest of a previous trustee. Petitioner was then indicted under 18 U. S. C. § 1001, and a jury found that each of these responses was a lie.
Today, the majority jettisons a 40-year-old unanimous decision of this Court, United States v. Bramblett, 348 U. S. 503 (1955), under which petitioner's conviction plainly would have been upheld. It does so despite an admission that the Court's reading of § 1001 in Bramblett was "not completely implausible," ante, at 706. In replacing Bramblett's plausible, albeit arguably flawed, interpretation of the statute with its own "sound" reading, the Court disrespects the traditionally stringent adherence to stare decisis in statutory decisions. Patterson v. McLean Credit Union, 491 U. S. 164, 172 (1989); Illinois Brick Co. v. Illinois, 431 U. S. 720, 736 (1977). The two reasons offered by the plurality in Part V of the opinion and the justification offered by the concurring opinion fall far short of the institutional hurdle erected by our past practice against overruling a decision of this Court interpreting an Act of Congress.
The first reason is styled as an "intervening development in the law"; under it, decisions of Courts of Appeals that cannot be reconciled with our earlier precedent are treated as a basis for disavowing, not the aberrant Court of Appeals deci-
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