Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/14pdf/13-7451_m64o.pdf
Page Number: 31.0

4 

YATES v. UNITED STATES 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

means, as the plurality says, that the dictionary definition
of  a  disputed  term  cannot  control.    See,  e.g.,  Bloate  v. 
United States, 559 U. S. 196, 205, n. 9 (2010).  But this is 
not  such  an  occasion,  for  here  the  text  and  its  context 
point  the  same  way.  Stepping  back  from  the  words  “tan-
gible object” provides only further evidence that Congress
said what it meant and meant what it said. 

Begin  with  the  way  the  surrounding  words  in  §1519 
reinforce  the  breadth  of  the  term  at  issue.    Section  1519 
refers to “any” tangible object, thus indicating (in line with 
that  word’s  plain  meaning)  a  tangible  object  “of  whatever 
kind.”  Webster’s  Third  New  International  Dictionary  97 
(2002).  This  Court  has  time  and  again  recognized  that 
“any”  has  “an  expansive  meaning,”  bringing  within  a
statute’s  reach  all  types  of  the  item  (here,  “tangible  ob-
ject”) to which the law refers.  Department of Housing and 
Urban  Development  v.  Rucker,  535  U.  S.  125,  131  (2002); 
see,  e.g.,  Republic  of  Iraq  v.  Beaty,  556  U.  S.  848,  856 
(2009);  Ali  v.  Federal  Bureau  of  Prisons,  552  U.  S.  214, 
219–220 (2008).  And the adjacent laundry list of verbs in 
§1519  (“alters,  destroys,  mutilates,  conceals,  covers  up, 
falsifies, or makes a false entry”) further shows that Con-
gress wrote a statute with a wide scope.  Those words are 
supposed to ensure—just as “tangible object” is meant to—
that §1519 covers the whole world of evidence-tampering,
in all its prodigious variety.  See United States v. Rodgers, 
466  U.  S.  475,  480  (1984)  (rejecting  a  “narrow,  technical 
definition”  of  a  statutory  term  when  it  “clashes  strongly”
with “sweeping” language in the same sentence).

Still  more,  “tangible  object”  appears  as  part  of  a  three-
noun  phrase  (including  also  “records”  and  “documents”) 
common  to  evidence-tampering  laws  and  always  under-
stood  to  embrace  things  of  all  kinds.    The  Model  Penal 
Code’s  evidence-tampering  section,  drafted  more  than  50
years  ago,  similarly  prohibits  a  person  from  “alter[ing], 
destroy[ing],  conceal[ing]  or  remov[ing]  any  record,  docu-