American Telephone and Telegraph Company, and Lucent Technologies Inc., United States, Defendant/cross-Appellant

I must respectfully dissent. The court refuses to honor an explicit mandate of an *1379unequivocal Congressional enactment. “Legislative history” cannot justify that refusal.1 A court has a responsibility to arrive at the right result in a case; it also has the obligation to explain itself in a manner that does no harm to the fabric of the law. Though the right result may eventually emerge, the route the court takes to get there has the potential for causing considerable harm to legal principles that I deem important.

In the first part of its opinion, the court describes the Government’s efforts…