Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 797.0

529US3

Unit: $U56

[09-28-01 09:22:19] PAGES PGT: OPIN

722

JOHNSON v. UNITED STATES

Scalia, J., dissenting

part of the term of supervised release to be served in prison,
with the rest of the term remaining in place to be served on
supervised release.
In the text actually adopted, however,
the supervised-release term is not left in place, but is explic-
itly “revoked.” 5

Further, if one assumes, as the Court does, that a revoked
term somehow “survives the . . . order of revocation,” ante,
at 705, and retains effect (even without any statutory au-
thorization for reimposition or reactivation), then it would
follow that whatever part of it is not required to be served
in prison is necessarily still
in effect. Thus the district
court would have no discretion not to require the remainder
of the term to be served on supervised release. Yet the
Court seems to view further supervised release as only an
“option.” Ante, at 704, 713, n. 13; accord, ante, at 713–714
(Kennedy, J., concurring in part).

The Court’s confusing discussion of how § 3583(a) would
produce consequences similar to those its opinion achieves—
and consequences that are entirely reasonable—i f
§ 3583(e)(3) read differently from the way it does read, ante,
I do not contend that the
at 707–708, is entirely irrelevant.
result the Court reaches is any way remarkable, only that it
is not the result called for by the statute. The Court care-
fully does not maintain—and it could not, for reasons I need
not describe—that subsection (a) justiﬁes imposition of post-

5 The concurrence adjusts for that inconvenient fact by simply changing
the object of the verb, concluding that “after the right to be on supervised
release has been revoked there is yet an unexpired term of supervised
release that can be allocated . . . in whole or in part to conﬁnement and to
release . . . .” Ante, at 713 (Kennedy, J., concurring in part) (emphasis
added). The statute, however, does not revoke “the right to be on super-
vised release”; it revokes the “term of supervised release” itself, see
§ 3583(e)(3), which is utterly incompatible with the notion that the term
remains in place. Switching the object of “revoke” is no fair in itself, and
it leaves the provision entirely redundant, since revoking “the right to be
on supervised release” adds nothing to “requir[ing] the person to serve in
prison all or part of the term,” § 3583(e)(3).