Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 794

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Unit: $U56

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

719

Scalia, J., dissenting

gress, by the phrase “revoke a term of supervised release,”
meant “recall but not cancel a term of supervised release” is
both linguistically and conceptually absurd.

The dictionary support that the Court seeks to enlist for
its deﬁnition is ﬁctitious.
It is indeed the case that both the
Oxford English Dictionary and Webster’s Third New Inter-
national Dictionary give as a meaning of “revoke” “to call or
summon back”; but neither of them adds the ﬁllip that is
essential to the Court’s point—that the thing called back “re-
tain vitality.” Ante, at 707. They say nothing at all about
the implication of calling or summoning back—which, in the
case of calling or summoning back an order or decree, is nec-
essarily annulment.3 Further, while the dictionaries the
Court mentions do not give its chosen meaning “antiquarian
reproach,” ante, at 706, n. 9, many dictionaries do. The New
Shorter Oxford shows this usage as obsolete, see New
Shorter Oxford English Dictionary 2583 (1993), and the pre-
vious edition of Webster’s New International shows it as
rare, see Webster’s New International Dictionary 2134 (2d
ed. 1942). Other dictionaries also show the Court’s chosen
meaning as rare, e. g., Chambers English Dictionary 1257
(1988), as obsolete or archaic, e. g., Cassell Concise English
Dictionary 1149 (1992); Funk and Wagnalls New Standard
Dictionary 2104 (1957), or do not give it as a meaning at all,
e. g., American Heritage Dictionary 1545 (3d ed. 1992).4

3 As the Court suggests in its quotation of Webster’s Third’s deﬁnition
of “RECALL,” see ante, at 706, the annulment may be only temporary (a
“suspension”); but that is so only if there is some authority for repromulga-
tion after the revocation—which leaves the Court no further along than it
was before it dipped into the more obscure meanings of “revoke”: it must
identify some authority to reimpose supervised release. This blends into
the next point made in text.

4 Whether one attributes any currency to “revoke” in the sense of “call
back” depends, I think, on whether one counts as current usage ﬁgurative
usage. The OED, while not showing the meaning “to call back” as obso-
13 Ox-
lete, does indicate that its current usage is “chieﬂy ﬁg[urative].”