Cite as: 537 U. S. 149 (2003)
Opinion of the Court
134 Ohio St. 295, 299, 16 N. E. 2d 459, 462 (1938))); United States v. Vonn, supra."
As in Echazabal, respondents here fail to show any reason that Congress would have considered reassignments after appeal "to go hand in hand" with tardy initial assignments. Since Congress apparently never thought that initial assignments would be late, see supra, at 164-167, the better inference is that what we face here is nothing more than a case unprovided for.12
12 There is, of course, no " 'case unprovided for' exception" to the expressio unius canon, post, at 181 (Scalia, J., dissenting). It is merely that the canon does not tell us that a case was provided for by negative implication unless an item unmentioned would normally be associated with items listed.
The companies emphasize that § 9704(f)(2)(B) requires that beneficiaries whose operator goes out of business must be treated as unassigned and cannot be reassigned. Even assuming that a provision that goes to the definition of "applicable percentage" and does not directly implicate assignments has the effect the companies suggest, the most that could be said is that Congress wished to identify the first, most responsible operator for a given retiree, and not to follow that with a second assignment to a less responsible operator if the initial assigned operator left the business. This interest does not indicate an object of date-specific finality over accuracy in the first assignment; on the contrary, it opts for finality only once an accurate initial assignment has been made. In the absence of a more exact explanation for this arrangement, we suppose the explanation is good political horse trading. But provisions that by their terms govern after the initial assignment is made tell us nothing about the period in which an initial assignment may be made. In fact, the permissibility under § 9706(f) of postappeal reassignment after October 1, 1993, makes plain that Congress was not "insisting upon as perfect a matchup as possible up to October 1, 1993, and then prohibiting future changes, both by way of initial assignment or otherwise," post, at 183 (Scalia, J., dissenting), as Justice Scalia himself agrees. On the contrary, the reassignment provision indicates that a system of accuracy "in initial assignments, whether made before the deadline or afterward," is precisely what the Act envisions. Ibid. Here, as throughout this opinion, "accuracy" refers not to an elusive system of "perfect fairness," ibid., but to assignments by the Commissioner following the scheme set out in §§ 9706(a)(1)-(3).
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