504
Souter, J., dissenting
and 309(c)(1) cannot be reconciled. Either aliens in proceedings on April 1, 1997, have no access to judicial review or else they have the access available under the law that applied before § 1252 came into effect.2
call for immediate implementation of all of these reforms." Ibid. Representative Smith then proposed the first technical change, which does not concern us. He then added that "there is a need to clarify the scope of section 306(c) to ensure that it does not conflict with section 309(c)(4)," and introduced an amendment to § 306(c)(1). Ibid. That amendment, enacted October 11, 1996, eliminated the part of the original § 306(c)(1) that applied new § 1252 to final orders filed on or after the date of enactment, but left untouched the immediate application of subsection (g). 110 Stat. 3657. The result of this amendment was that § 306(c)(1) no longer qualified its preclusion of judicial review for aliens from the date of enactment with the application of the new judicial review provisions of § 1252 to those aliens once final orders were issued against them. Instead, the amended language of § 306(c)(1) now simply barred judicial review altogether. Thus the anomaly appears to have resulted from incomplete technical amendment.
2 Although the parties have not so argued, it might at first blush be thought that because § 1252(g) includes the language "notwithstanding any other provision of law," it carves an exception out of the general rule of § 309(c)(1). The two problems with this notion are, first, that such an exception would swallow the rule, and, second, that § 309(c)(1)(A) makes "the amendments made by this subtitle," including § 1252(g) itself, inapplicable to aliens in proceedings as of April 1, 1997. If § 1252(g) is not applicable to such aliens, then the words "notwithstanding any other provision of law" cannot have any special force regarding such aliens.
It might also be thought that, because § 309(a) announces that IIRIRA shall take effect on April 1, 1997, except as provided in various sections, including § 306(c), and § 309(c)(1) is enacted "[s]ubject to the succeeding provisions of this subsection," somehow § 309(c)(1) does not apply to § 306(c). Ante, at 477, n. 5. This cannot be so, of course, because the "subsection" in question is § 309(c), not § 309(a). The exception in § 309(a) means only to acknowledge that § 306(c) is effective immediately upon enactment, not on April 1, 1997.
Finally, neither § 306(c) nor § 309(c) may be said to be enacted later than the other for purposes of implicit repeal. Both were enacted on September 30, 1996, and both were amended by the removal or alteration of some language on October 11, 1996. Because of this simultaneous enactment,
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