Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 785.0

529US3

Unit: $U56

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

710

JOHNSON v. UNITED STATES

Opinion of the Court

likely to have meant to compel the courts to wash their hands
of the worst cases at the end of reimprisonment.10

The idea that a sentencing court should have authority to
subject a reincarcerated prisoner to further supervised re-
lease has support, moreover, in the pre-Guidelines practice
with respect to nondetentive monitoring, as illuminated in
United States v. O’Neil, 11 F. 3d 292 (CA1 1993). The Sen-
tencing Guidelines, after all, “represent an approach that be-
gins with, and builds upon,” pre-Guidelines law, see USSG,
ch. 1, pt. A, intro. comment. 3, and when a new legal regime
develops out of an identiﬁable predecessor, it is reasonable
to look to the precursor in fathoming the new law. Cf. INS
v. Cardoza-Fonseca, 480 U. S. 421, 432–434 (1987) (examining
practice under precursor statute to determine meaning of
amended statute).

Two sorts of nondetentive monitoring existed before the
introduction of supervised release: probation and parole. Of
these pre-Guidelines options, the one more closely analogous

10 Justice Scalia attributes the strong preference for supervised re-
lease at the conclusion of a prison term to this Court, post, at 724, when
that view of penal policy comes not from the Court but from Congress.
The point is crucial. Our obligation is to give effect to congressional pur-
pose so long as the congressional language does not itself bar that result.
See, e. g., Holloway v. United States, 526 U. S. 1, 9 (1999) (noting that
statutory language should be interpreted in light of congressional policy);
Caron v. United States, 524 U. S. 308, 315 (1998) (rejecting petitioner’s
reading of a statute because it “yields results contrary to a likely, and
rational, congressional policy”). One who believes that courts must not
look beyond text might well ﬁnd any invocation of policy unjustiﬁed (even
willful), at least when the policy does not rise unbidden from the words of
the statute, but we have never treated the text as such a jealous guide
and have traditionally sought to construe a statute so as to reach results
consistent with what Chief Justice Taney called “its object and policy.”
See United States v. Heirs of Boisdore´, 8 How. 113, 122 (1849). And in
what Chief Justice Marshall called the attempt “to discover the design of
the legislature,” we have “seize[d] every thing from which aid can be de-
rived.” United States v. Fisher, 2 Cranch 358, 386 (1805).