Gutierrez de Martinez v. Lamagno, 515 U.S. 417, 24 (1995)

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440

GUTIERREZ de MARTINEZ v. LAMAGNO

Souter, J., dissenting

absence of a like provision from the Westfall Act especially good evidence that Congress meant to drop this feature from the system, leaving "shall" to carry its usual unconditional message. See Brewster v. Gage, 280 U. S. 327, 337 (1930) ("The deliberate selection of language so differing from that used in . . . earlier Acts indicates that a change of law was intended"); 2A N. Singer, Sutherland on Statutory Construction § 51.02, p. 454 (4th ed. 1984). That conclusion gains further force from the presence in the Westfall Act of an express provision for judicial review at the behest of a defending employee, when the Attorney General refuses to certify that the acts fell within the scope of Government employment. See 28 U. S. C. § 2679(d)(3) ("[i]n the event that the Attorney General has refused to certify scope of office or employment under this section, the employee may at any time before trial petition the court to find and certify that the employee was acting within the scope of his office or employment"). Providing authority in one circumstance but not another implies an absence of authority in the statute's silence. See Russello v. United States, 464 U. S. 16, 23 (1983) ("Where Congress includes particular language in one section of a statute but omits it in another section of the same Act, it is generally presumed that Congress acts intentionally and purposely in the disparate inclusion or exclusion"); see also United States v. Naftalin, 441 U. S. 768, 773-774 (1979).

Even if these textually grounded implications were not enough to confirm a plain reading of the text and decide the case, an anomalous jurisdictional consequence of the Court's position should be enough to warn us away from treating the Attorney General's certification as reviewable. The Court recognizes that there is nothing equivocal about the Act's provision that once a state tort action has been removed to a federal court after a certification by the Attorney General, it may never be remanded to the state system: "certification of the Attorney General shall conclusively establish scope of

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