Cite as: 525 U. S. 471 (1999)
Souter, J., dissenting
actment of IIRIRA for aliens in proceedings before April 1, 1997. While I do not lightly reach the conclusion that § 306(c)(1) is essentially without force, my respect for Congress's intent in enacting § 309(c)(1) is necessarily balanced by respect for Congress's intent in enacting § 306(c)(1). No canon of statutory construction familiar to me specifically addresses the situation in which two simultaneously enacted provisions of the same statute flatly contradict one another.3 We are, of course, bound to avoid such a dilemma if we can, by glimpsing some uncontradicted meaning for each provision. But the attempt to salvage an application for each must have some stopping place, and the Court's attempt here seems to me to go beyond that point. In this anomalous situation where the two statutory provisions are fundamentally at odds, constitutional doubt will have to serve as the best guide to breaking the tie.
Because I think that § 309(c)(1) applies to aliens in proceedings before April 1, 1997, I think it applies to respondents in this case. The law governing their proceedings and subsequent judicial review should therefore be the law prevailing before IIRIRA. That law, in my view, afforded respondents an opportunity to litigate their claims before the District Court. Former 8 U. S. C. § 1105a(a) governed "judicial review of all final orders of deportation." For actions that fell outside the scope of this provision, an "alien's remedies would, of course, ordinarily lie first in an action brought in an appropriate district court." Cheng Fan Kwok v. INS, 392 U. S. 206, 210 (1968). In McNary v. Haitian Refugee Center, Inc., 498 U. S. 479 (1991), we applied this principle in
3 In such a situation, one court held some 70 years ago that "[i]t being conceded that the two acts are contradictory and irreconcilable, and being unable to determine that either became effective, in point of time, before the other, it results that both are invalid." Maddux v. Nashville, 158 Tenn. 307, 312, 13 S. W. 2d 319, 321 (1929). In our case, invalidating §§ 306(c)(1) and 309(c)(1) would enable us to apply the law in place before the enactment of IIRIRA, as we ought to do on the other grounds here.
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