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529US3

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JOHNSON v. UNITED STATES

Scalia, J., dissenting

As for the second step of the Court’s analysis: Even if
there were justiﬁcation for giving “revoke” something other
than its normal meaning, and even if the meaning the Court
adopts were not unheard of, the latter meaning still does not
provide the needed authorization for reimposition of super-
vised release. The statute does not say that the court may
“revoke” (“call back,” as the Court would have it) only part
of the term of supervised release, so there is no argument
that some portion remains in place for later use. Thus, even
if “revoke” means “call back,” a court would need statutory
authorization to reimpose this “called back” term of super-
vised release. But § 3583(e)(3) provides no such authoriza-
tion. The court is empowered to “revoke” the term; it is
empowered to require that “all or part” of the term be
served in prison; it is not empowered to reimpose “all or
part” of the term as a later term of supervised release.

ford English Dictionary 838 (2d ed. 1989) (OED).
Just as current usage
would allow one to say that “the emperor called back his decree,” so also
it would allow one to say that the emperor “revoked” his decree in that
ﬁgurative sense of “calling it back”—i. e., in the sense of canceling it.
It
is assuredly not current usage, however—I think not even rare current
usage—to use “revoke” to connote a literal calling back.
(“Since my bird
dog was ranging too far aﬁeld, I revoked him.”)

The Court chastises this example, suggesting that only a tippling hunter
would “revoke” his bird dog, as “dogs cannot be revoked, even though
sentencing orders can be.” Ante, at 707, n. 9.
I could not agree more.
However, the deﬁnition the Court employs (“call back” without the impli-
cation of cancellation) envisions that dogs can be revoked—thus illustrat-
ing its obscurity. The OED deﬁnition on which the Court relies, see ante,
at 706, n. 9, deﬁnes “revoke” as “to recall; to call or summon back . . . an
animal or thing.”
13 OED 838 (2d ed. 1989). The ﬁrst example it gives
of this usage is as follows: “These hounds . . . being acquainted with their
masters watchwordes, eyther in revoking or imboldening them to serve
the game.”
Ibid. Of course the Court’s “not unheard of ” usage, ante, at
706, is not limited to recalling dogs—oxen can be revoked as well, as the
OED’s third example illustrates: “Ye must revoke The patient Oxe unto
the Yoke.”

13 OED 838.