Antonin Scalia

“ The federal homestead exemption, for example, allows the debtor to exempt from the property of the estate "the debtor's aggregate interest, not to exceed $7,500 in value, in . . . a residence." § 522 (d) (1) . If respondent's interpretation of § 522 (f) were applied to this exemption, a debtor who owned a house worth $10,000 that was subject to a judicial lien for $9,000 would not be entitled to the full homestead exemption of $7,500. ”

“ The point of § 522 (f) is not to exclude waivers (though that is done in passing, waivers are addressed directly in § 522 (e) ) but to provide that the debtor may avoid the fixing of a lien. In that context, for every instance in which "would have been entitled" may be accurate (because the incidentally mentioned waiver occurred) there will be thousands of instances in which "is entitled" should have been used. It seems to us that "would have been entitled" must refer to the generality, if not indeed the universality, of cases covered by the provision ”

“ An estate in bankruptcy consists of all the interests in property, legal and equitable, possessed by the debtor at the time of filing, as well as those interests recovered or recoverable through transfer and lien avoidance provisions. An exemption is an interest withdrawn from the estate (and hence from the creditors) for the benefit of the debtor. Section 522 determines what property a debtor may exempt. ”