Page:United States Reports 502 OCT. TERM 1991.pdf/587

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Cite as: 502 U. S. 410 (1992)

429

Scalia, J., dissenting

construction of § 506(d) would permit a more concise formulation: Instead of describing the redemption price as “the amount of the allowed secured claim. . . that is secured by such lien” it would have been possible to say simply “the amount of the claim. . . that is secured by such lien”—since § 506(d) would automatically have cut back the lien to the amount of the allowed secured claim. I would hardly call the more expansive formulation a redundancy—not when it is so far removed from the section that did the “cutting back” that the reader has likely forgotten it. Respondents and their amicus also make much of the need to avoid giving Chapter 7 debtors a better deal than they can receive under the other chapters of the Bankruptcy Code. They assert that, by enabling a Chapter 7 debtor to strip down a secured creditor’s liens and pocket any postpetition appreciation in the property, petitioner’s construction of § 506(d) will discourage debtors from using the preferred mechanisms of reorganization under Chapters 11, 12, and 13. This evaluation of the “finely reticulated” incentives affecting a debtor’s behavior rests upon critical—and perhaps erroneous—assumptions about the meaning of provisions in the reorganization chapters. Respondents assume, for example, that a debtor in Chapter 13 cannot strip down a mortgage placed on the debtor’s home; but that assumption may beg the very question the Court answers today. True, § 1322(b)(2) provides that Chapter 13 filers may not “modify the rights of holders of secured claims” that are “secured only by a security interest in real property that is the debtor’s principal residence.” (Emphasis added.) But this can be (and has been) read, in light of § 506(a), to prohibit modification of the mortgagee’s rights only with respect to the portion of his claim that is deemed secured under the Code, see, e. g., In re Hart, 923 F. 2d 1410, 1415 (CA10 1991); Wilson v. Commonwealth Mortgage Corp., 895 F. 2d 123, 127 (CA3 1990). If petitioner’s construction of § 506(d) were applied consistently in this fashion to the Code’s various chapters,