Cite as: 503 U. S. 291 (1992)
Opinion of Souter, J.
statute creating the offense. The amendment also, the Government says, left the law clear in its reference to the statute creating the offense as the measure of an "authorized" sentence. This conclusion is said to be confirmed by a statement in the House Report that the amendment "delet[es an] incorrect cross-referenc[e]," H. R. Rep. No. 99-797, p. 21 (1986), which, the Government argues, "suggests that no substantive change was intended." Brief for United States 20, n. 4.
We agree with the Government's argument up to a point.
A sentencing court could certainly have been confused by the reference to § 3581(b). A sentencing judge considering a juvenile defendant charged with an offense bearing no letter classification, and told to look for "the maximum term of imprisonment that would be authorized [according to letter grade] by section 3581(b)," would have turned first to § 3559(a) to obtain a letter classification. The court perhaps would have felt obliged to ignore the provision of § 3559(b) that "the maximum term of imprisonment is the term authorized by the statute describing the offense" in favor of a longer term provided for by the appropriate letter grade in § 3581(b). Indeed, the sentencing judge would have been faced with this puzzle in virtually every case, since the system of classifying by letter grades adopted in 1984 was only to be used in future legislation defining federal criminal offenses. See Brief for United States 16. No federal offense on the books at the time the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 was adopted carried a letter grade in its defining statute, and Congress has used the device only rarely in the ensuing years.
Thus, while it included a reference to § 3581(b), § 5037(c) was ambiguous. This ambiguity was resolved by an amendment that, absent promulgation of the Guidelines, might have left the question of the "authorized" maximum term of imprisonment to be determined only by reference to the penalty provided by the statute creating the offense, whether
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