Cite as: 537 U. S. 149 (2003)
Scalia, J., dissenting
of Evidence must be recognized if it is unlikely that Congress (or perhaps the Rules committee) "considered" those unnamed exceptions? Our cases do not support such a proposition. See, e. g., Williamson v. United States, 512 U. S. 594 (1994); United States v. Salerno, 505 U. S. 317 (1992).3 There is no more reason to make a "case unprovided for" exception to the clear import of an exclusive listing than there is to make such an exception to any other clear textual disposition. In a way, therefore, the Court's treatment of this issue has ample precedent—in those many wrongly decided cases that replace what the legislature said with what courts think the legislature would have said (i. e., in the judges' estimation should have said) if it had only "considered" unanticipated consequences of what it did say (of which the courts disapprove). In any event, the relevant question here is not whether § 9704(f)(2) excludes other grounds for adjustments to the applicable percentage, but rather whether anything in the statute affirmatively authorizes them. The answer to that question is no—an answer that should not surprise the Court, given its acknowledgment that Congress "did not foresee a failure to make timely assignments." Ante, at 170-171.
3 The most enduring consequence of today's opinion may well be its gutting of the ancient canon of construction. It speaks volumes about the dearth of precedent for the Court's position that the principal case it relies upon, ante, at 168-169, is Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Echazabal, 536 U. S. 73 (2002). The express language of the statute interpreted in that case demonstrated that the single enumerated example of a "qualification standard" was illustrative rather than exhaustive: "The term 'qualification standards' may include a requirement that an individual shall not pose any direct threat to the health or safety of other individuals in the work-place." 42 U. S. C. § 12113(b) (emphasis added). Little wonder that the Court did not find in that text "an omission [that] bespeaks a negative implication," 536 U. S., at 81. And of course the opinion said nothing about the requirement (central to the Court's analysis today) that it be "fair to suppose that Congress considered the unnamed possibility," ante, at 168.
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