Page:United States v. Hansen.pdf/42

10 The majority first points out that the 1885 version of the encouragement provision criminalized “knowingly assisting, encouraging or soliciting” certain immigration. §3, 23 Stat. 333 (emphasis added); see. Because the term “encouraging” was placed alongside “assisting” and “soliciting” in this precursor provision, the majority maintains that the term “encouraging” is narrowed by the canon of noscitur a sociis, “which counsels that a word is given more precise content by the neighboring words with which it is associated.” Williams, 553 U. S., at 294; see. In Williams, the Court (in an opinion by Justice Scalia) reasoned that, “[w]hen taken in isolation,” the broad term “ ‘promotes’ ” is “susceptible of multiple and wide-ranging meanings,” but that, “in a list that includes ‘solicits,’ ‘distributes,’ and ‘advertises,’ [it] is most sensibly read to mean the act of recommending purported child pornography to another person for his acquisition.” 553 U. S., at 294–295.

But, as the majority here ultimately goes on to acknowledge,, the statutory word “encouraging” was not actually accompanied by the narrower terms “soliciting” and “assisting” throughout the course of this statute’s history. And for the history to be meaningfully referenced, the state of the statute must be considered over time, not just at particular points in which words that seem to support a particular reading might have appeared. The delta between the purportedly narrow version of the statute that the majority points to, and what later happened to the statutory text, is important—and there is no dispute that Congress later removed the terms “soliciting” and “assisting” from the encouragement provision, leaving “encouraging” and “inducing” to stand “in isolation,” 553 U. S., at 294. See. Tracing the history over time clearly establishes that Congress deleted the very narrowing terms that