Page:United States Reports 502 OCT. TERM 1991.pdf/586

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DEWSNUP v. TIMM Scalia, J., dissenting

expressed) invalidation does not exist. The premise of the argument—that if a statute qualifies a noun with two adjectives (“allowed” and “secured”), and provides exceptions with respect to only one of the adjectives, then the other can be disregarded—is simply false. The most that can be said is that the two exceptions in § 506(d) do not contradict the United States’ and respondents’ interpretation; but they in no way suggest or support it. Respondents and the United States also identify supposed inconsistencies between petitioner’s construction of § 506(d) and other sections of the Bankruptcy Code; they are largely illusory. The principal source of concern is § 722, which enables a Chapter 7 debtor to “redeem” narrow classes of exempt or abandoned personal property from “a lien securing a dischargeable consumer debt.” The price of redemption is fixed as “the amount of the allowed secured claim of [the lienholder] that is secured by such lien.” (Emphasis added.) This provision, we are told, would be largely superfluous if § 506(d) automatically stripped liens securing undersecured claims to the value of the collateral, i. e., to the value of the allowed secured claims. This argument is greatly overstated. Section 722 is necessary, and not superfluous, because § 506(d) is not a redemption provision. It reduces the value of a lienholder’s equitable interest in a debtor’s property to the property’s liquidation value, but it does not insure the debtor an opportunity to “redeem” the property at that price, i. e., to “free [the] property. . . from [the] mortgage or pledge by paying the debt for which it stood as security.” Black’s Law Dictionary 1278 (6th ed. 1990). Congress had good reason to be solicitous of the debtor’s right to redeem personal property (the exclusive subject of § 722), since state redemption laws are typically less generous for personalty than for real property. Compare, e. g., Utah Code Ann. § 57–1–31 (1990) with Uniform Commercial Code § 9–506, 3A U. L. A. 370 (1981). The most that can be said regarding § 722 is that petitioner’s