Page:United States Reports 502 OCT. TERM 1991.pdf/590

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DEWSNUP v. TIMM Scalia, J., dissenting

furcation accomplished by § 506(a) were nullified, the status of the creditor’s allowed claim—i. e., whether (and to what extent) it is “secured” or “unsecured” for purposes of the bankruptcy distribution—would be impossible to determine. Instead, the claim would have to be treated as either completely “secured” or completely “unsecured,” neither of which disposition would accord with the Code’s distribution principles. The former would deprive the secured claimant of a share in the distribution to general creditors altogether. See 11 U. S. C. § 726 (providing for distribution of property of the estate to unsecured claimants). The latter (treating the claim as completely unsecured) would permit the lienholder to share in the pro rata distribution to general creditors to the full amount of his allowed claim (rather than simply to the amount of the § 506(a)-defined “unsecured claim”) while reserving his in rem claim against the security. Respondents’ variation on the Tenth Circuit’s holding avoids these alternative absurdities only by embracing yet another textual irrationality—asserting that, even though the language that is the basis for the “abandonment” theory (the phrase “in which the estate has an interest”) is contained in § 506(a), and only applies to § 506(d) through § 506(a), nonetheless only the effects of § 506(d) and not the effects of § 506(a) are undone by abandonment. This hardly deserves the name of a theory. V As I have said, the Court does not trouble to make or evaluate the foregoing arguments. Rather, in Part II of its opinion it merely describes (uncritically) “the contrasting positions of the respective parties and their amici” concerning the meaning of § 506(d), ante, at 416, and concludes, because the positions are contrasting, that there is “ambiguity in the text,” ante, at 417. (This mode of analysis makes every litigated statute ambiguous.) Having thus established “ambiguity,” the Court is able to summon down its deus ex machina: “the pre-Code rule that liens pass through bank-