Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 801

529US3

Unit: $U56

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726

JOHNSON v. UNITED STATES

Scalia, J., dissenting

or terms of more than one year, a prisoner shall be eligible
for release on parole after serving one-third of such
term . . .”). The question whether further supervised re-
lease may be required after revocation of supervised release
is so entirely different from the question whether further
parole may be accorded after revocation of parole, that the
Court’s appeal to the parole practice demonstrates nothing
except the dire scarcity of arguments available to support
its conclusion.7

7 The Court also appeals to pre-Guidelines practice regarding probation
and special parole. Ante, at 711–712, n. 11. The pre-Guidelines proba-
tion practice is altogether inapt, since the governing statute explicitly pro-
vided for resentencing after violation, and speciﬁcally allowed the court
to “impose any sentence which might originally have been imposed.” 18
U. S. C. § 3653 (1982 ed.) (repealed). This makes it quite impossible for
probation practice to support the Court’s “broader point that a court’s
powers at the original sentencing are the baseline from which powers at
resentencing are determined,” ante, at 711, n. 11; all it proves is that they
are the baseline where the statute says so.
Indeed, the fact that the stat-
ute found it necessary to say so tends to contradict the Court’s position.
Special parole, while more akin to supervised release than either parole
or probation, hardly provides clear support for the Court’s reading of
§ 3583(e)(3).
In fact, the majority of Courts of Appeals have read the
relevant statute regarding special parole, 21 U. S. C. § 841(c) (1982 ed.) (re-
pealed), as not allowing reimposition of special parole in circumstances
analogous to those at issue here. See Manso v. Federal Detention Center,
182 F. 3d 814, 817 (CA11 1999) (citing cases). The Court’s reliance on the
Parole Commission’s 1977 interpretation of the special parole statute, see
28 CFR § 2.57(c) (1999), is misplaced. The principle that Congress is pre-
sumed to legislate in light of existing administrative interpretations does
not stretch to cover an administrative interpretation of a statute dealing
with a different subject, of recent vintage, and unsupported by judi-
cial opinion. Cf. Bragdon v. Abbott, 524 U. S. 624, 645 (1998) (repetition
of existing statutory language assumed to incorporate “uniform body of
administrative and judicial precedent” that had “settled the meaning” of
existing provision); Haig v. Agee, 453 U. S. 280, 297 (1981) (assuming
congressional awareness of “longstanding administrative construction”).
Further, some courts have found it unclear whether the Parole Commis-
sion’s regulation itself envisions reimposition of special parole. See, e. g.,
Fowler v. United States Parole Commission, 94 F. 3d 835, 841 (CA3 1996).