486
Opinion of the Court
Of course many provisions of IIRIRA are aimed at protecting the Executive's discretion from the courts—indeed, that can fairly be said to be the theme of the legislation. See, e. g., 8 U. S. C. § 1252(a)(2)(A) (limiting review of any claim arising from the inspection of aliens arriving in the United States); § 1252(a)(2)(B) (barring review of denials of discretionary relief authorized by various statutory provisions); § 1252(a)(2)(C) (barring review of final removal orders
discretion. We know of no case involving a challenge to "the decision . . . to open an investigation"—perhaps because such decisions are rarely made public. And we know of no case challenging "the decision . . . to issue a show cause order" (though that might well be considered a mere specification of the decision to "commence proceedings" which some cases do challenge and which § 1252(g) covers). Section 1252(g) was directed against a particular evil: attempts to impose judicial constraints upon prosecutorial discretion. It does not tax the imagination to understand why it focuses upon the stages of administration where those attempts have occurred.
But in any event, any challenge to imagination posed by reading § 1252(g) as written would be small price to pay for escaping the overwhelming difficulties of Justice SouterTMs theory. He makes no effort to explain why his broad, catchall reading of § 1252(g) does not render it redundant of § 1252(b)(9). And his throw-in-the-towel approach to § 306(c)(1), which reads it out of the statute because he finds it difficult to explain, see post, at 509, not only strains the imagination but ruptures the faculty of reason. We do not think our interpretation "parses [§ 1252(g)] too finely," post, at 505; but if it did, we would think that modest fault preferable to the exercise of such a novel power of nullification.
Justice Stevens, like Justice Souter, rejects § 1252(g)'s explicit limitation to specific steps in the deportation process. He then invokes the conflict with § 306(c)(1) that this expansive interpretation creates as justification for concluding that, when § 1252(g) uses the word "section," it "can't mean what it says," Green v. Bock Laundry Machine Co., 490 U. S. 504, 511 (1989) (internal quotation marks omitted)—empowering him to declare a "scrivener's error," post, at 498 (opinion concurring in judgment), and to change the word "section" to "Act." Justice StevensTM approach, like Justice Souter's, renders § 1252(g) redundant of § 1252(b)(9). That problem is solved by our more conventional solution: reading both "commence proceedings, adjudicate cases, or execute removal orders" and "section" to mean precisely what they say.
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