Cite as: 537 U. S. 293 (2003)
Breyer, J., dissenting
ernment cannot revoke the license—irrespective of the Government's motive. That, the majority writes, is what the statute says. Just read it. End of the matter.
It is dangerous, however, in any actual case of interpretive difficulty to rely exclusively upon the literal meaning of a statute's words divorced from consideration of the statute's purpose. That is so for a linguistic reason. General terms as used on particular occasions often carry with them implied restrictions as to scope. "Tell all customers that . . ." does not refer to every customer of every business in the world. That is also so for a legal reason. Law as expressed in statutes seeks to regulate human activities in particular ways. Law is tied to life. And a failure to understand how a statutory rule is so tied can undermine the very human activity that the law seeks to benefit. "No vehicles in the park" does not refer to baby strollers or even to tanks used as part of a war memorial. See Fuller, Positivism and Fidelity to Law—A Reply to Professor Hart, 71 Harv. L. Rev. 630, 663 (1958).
I
In my view this statute's language is similarly restricted. A restriction implicitly limits its scope to instances in which a government's license revocation is related to the fact that the debt was dischargeable in bankruptcy. Where the fact of bankruptcy is totally irrelevant, where the government's action has no relation either through purpose or effect to bankruptcy or to dischargeability, where consequently the revocation cannot threaten the bankruptcy-related concerns that underlie the statute, then the revocation falls outside the statute's scope. Congress intended this kind of exception to its general language in order to avoid consequences which, if not "absurd," are at least at odds with the statute's basic objectives. Cf. United States v. Kirby, 7 Wall. 482, 486 (1869) ("All laws should receive a sensible construction. General terms should be so limited in their application as not to lead to injustice, oppression, or an absurd consequence").
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