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18 

BRUESEWITZ v. WYETH LLC 

Opinion of the Court 

(1999); United States v. Mine Workers, 330 U. S. 258, 281– 
  Real  (pre-enactment)  legislative  history  is
282  (1947).
persuasive  to  some  because  it  is  thought  to  shed  light  on
what  legislators  understood  an  ambiguous  statutory  text 
to mean when they voted to enact it into law.  See Exxon 
Mobil Corp. v. Allapattah Services, Inc., 545 U. S. 546, 568 
(2005).  But  post-enactment  legislative  history  by  defini-
tion  “could  have  had  no  effect  on  the  congressional  vote,”
District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U. S. 570, 605 (2008). 

It  does  not  matter  that  §300aa–22(b)(1)  did  not  take
effect  until  the  later  Congress  passed  the  excise  tax  that
funds the compensation scheme,73 and that the supposedly
dispositive  Committee  Report  is  attached  to  that  funding
legislation.74    Those  who  voted  on  the  relevant  statutory 
language  were  not  necessarily  the  same  persons  who
crafted the statements in the later Committee Report; or if
they were did not necessarily have the same views at that 
earlier  time;  and  no  one  voting  at  that  earlier  time  could 
possibly  have  been  informed  by  those  later  statements. 
Permitting  the  legislative  history  of  subsequent  funding 
legislation  to  alter  the  meaning  of  a  statute  would  set  a
dangerous  precedent.    Many  provisions  of  federal  law 
depend  on  appropriations  or  include  sunset  provisions;75 
they  cannot  be  made  the  device  for  unenacted  statutory 
revision. 

That brings us to the second flaw in the dissent’s syllo-
gism:  Comment  k  did  not  have  a  “commonly  understood 
meaning”76  in  the  mid-1980’s.  Some  courts  thought  it 
required  a  case-specific  showing  that  a  product  was  “un-
avoidably  unsafe”;  many  others  thought  it  categorically 
exempted  certain  types  of  products  from  strict  liability.77 
—————— 

73 Pub. L. 99–960, §323(a), 100 Stat. 3784. 
74 H. R. Rep. No. 100–391, pt. 1, p. 701 (1987). 
75 See,  e.g.,  Pub.  L.  104–208,  §§401,  403(a),  110  Stat.  3009–655  to 
3009–656, 3009–659 to 3009–662, as amended, note following 8 U. S. C. 
§1324a (2006 ed., Supp. III) (E-Verify program expires Sept. 30, 2012). 

76 Post, at 8. 
77 See n. 39, supra; post, at 7–8, n. 5.