Griffin v. Oceanic Contractors, Inc.

Justice Stevens, with whom Justice Blackmun joins,

dissenting.

In final analysis, any question of statutory construction requires the judge to decide how the legislature intended its enactment to apply to the case at hand. The language of the statute is usually sufficient to answer that question, but “the reports are full of cases” in which the will of the legislature is not reflected in a literal reading of the words it has chosen.1 In my opinion this is such a case.

*578Qualifying language in 46 U. S. C. § 596 supports a much narrower construction than the Court adopts. For over 50 years after the…