534
Opinion of OTMConnor, J.
a similar safeguard against retrospective legislation concerning property rights. See id., at 394 (opinion of Chase, J.) ("The restraint against making any ex post facto laws was not considered, by the framers of the constitution, as extending to prohibit the depriving a citizen even of a vested right to property; or the provision, 'that private property should not be taken for public use, without just compensation,' was unnecessary"). In Security Industrial Bank, we considered a Takings Clause challenge to a Bankruptcy Code provision permitting debtors to avoid certain liens, possibly including those predating the statute's enactment. We expressed "substantial doubt whether the retroactive destruction of the appellees' liens . . . comport[ed] with the Fifth Amendment," and therefore construed the statute as applying only to lien interests vesting after the legislation took effect. 459 U. S., at 78-79. Similar concerns led this Court to strike down a bankruptcy provision as an unconstitutional taking where it affected substantive rights acquired before the provision was adopted. Louisville Joint Stock Land Bank v. Radford, 295 U. S. 555, 601-602 (1935).
Like those provisions, the Coal Act operates retroactively, divesting Eastern of property long after the company believed its liabilities under the 1950 W&R Fund to have been settled. And the extent of Eastern's retroactive liability is substantial and particularly far reaching. Even in areas in which retroactivity is generally tolerated, such as tax legislation, some limits have been suggested. See, e. g., United States v. Darusmont, 449 U. S. 292, 296-297 (1981) (per curiam) (noting Congress' practice of confining retroactive application of tax provisions to "short and limited periods"). The distance into the past that the Act reaches back to impose a liability on Eastern and the magnitude of that liability raise substantial questions of fairness. See Connolly, supra, at 229 (OTMConnor, J., concurring) (questioning constitutionality of imposing liability on "employers for un-funded benefits that accrued in the past under a pension plan
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