Court Opinion

ID: 9492204
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:34:54.996254+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:55:10.596453
License: Public Domain

PLAGE R, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I join the opinion in all respects, except for the lengthy discussion of legislative history regarding the remark by Senator Heflin. I understand why the court includes the discussion in the opinion, since the Government largely pins its case on that bit of material. The statute is clear on its face, however, as the court ably explains, and thus anything one Senator, or even several Senators, may have said with regard to the statute cannot vary its meaning; it is the statute that is the law, not some selected piece of the legislative record. I would have dismissed the Government’s appeal to legislative history with a brief statement to that effect.