A better example, he notes, involves a statute that would award attorney's fees to the winning party, and the need to think about what the original writer of the statute would mean by "attorney's fees".
But CTS and its supporters argue that the CERCLA amendment is not applicable to the current case because its text refers only to "statutes of limitation," and the North Carolina law in question involves a "statute of repose".
A few minutes later, she quoted a second passage along similar lines, and Mr. Phillips again deferred to her. "Obviously, Justice Ginsburg, you are in a much better position to judge what was intended here," he said, before going on to say that this case involved a different federal statute than the 2003 one.
Perhaps even more important, the case involves a federal statute that has been held unconstitutional.
It is unusual, although not unprecedented, for the Justice Department to file a brief in a lower court case that does not directly involve a federal statute.
One involves a 1913 statute that says people cannot marry in Massachusetts unless their marriage would be valid in their home state.
And four years ago, in a case involving a similar statute in St. John's County, Fla., the court refused to overturn lower-court decisions that rejected the argument that the ban violated erotic dancers' freedom of artistic expression.
The case that may come the closest to representing the vision that gave rise to the narco-terrorism statute involved a Colombian trafficker allied with the FARC named José María Corredor Ibague, who was arrested in 2006 and convicted under the Patriot Act provision.
But that decision involved a question of constitutional law, while Tuesday's decision in AT&T v. Federal Communications Commission, No. 09-1279, conlydered only the meaning of a statute.
But the other thing about that MTBE case is that it involved a different federal statute the Safe Drinking Water Act.
