Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 796.0

529US3

Unit: $U56

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

Cite as: 529 U. S. 694 (2000)

721

Scalia, J., dissenting

The Court opines that no authorization for further super-
vised release is needed, because the fact that the district
court may require “all or part of the term of supervised re-
lease” to be served in prison demonstrates that the revoked
term continues to have some metaphysical effect, ante, at
705–706, so that “the balance of it [can] remain effective as a
term of supervised release when the reincarceration is over,”
ante, at 706.
In allowing
It demonstrates no such thing.
the district court to require that “all or part of the term of
supervised release” be spent in prison, the statute simply
describes the length of the permitted imprisonment by refer-
ence to that now-defunct term of supervised release.
It is
quite beyond me how the Court can believe that the statute
“does not read” this way, ante, at 706, n. 8, and the concur-
rence that “[t]his . . . is not what the text says,” ante, at 714.
A “term of supervised release” in what might be called the
substantive rather than the temporal sense—i. e., the sen-
tence to a period of supervised release—cannot possibly be
served in prison. To be in prison is not to be released. The
only sense in which “all or part of the term of supervised
release” can be served in prison is the temporal sense. Cf.
United States v. Johnson, ante, at 57 (“To say respondent
was released while still imprisoned diminishes the concept
the word intends to convey”). The Court’s unrealistic read-
ing is also undermined by the fact that § 3583(g) provides for
serving in prison part of “the term of supervised release,”
in spite of the fact that the term there has been “termi-
nated,” so that even the Court would not claim it has ongoing
vitality. See n. 2, supra. And ﬁnally, in concluding that the
term of supervised release remains in place, the Court essen-
tially reads the phrase “revoke a term of supervised release”
out of the statute, treating the subsection as if it did no more
than authorize the court to “require the person to serve in
prison all or part of the term of supervised release” origi-
nally imposed, § 3583(e)(3). Of course the statute could have
been drafted to say just that—allowing the court to require