756
Opinion of the Court
467 U. S. 837 (1984), upheld Amendment 506 as an appropriate exercise of the Commission's discretion. 70 F. 3d 1396, 1403-1409 (1995). The First Circuit looked to the statutory language and "f[ou]nd no clear congressional directive regarding the meaning of the term 'maximum' as that term is used in section 994(h)." Id., at 1406. In the court's view, the meaning of the word "maximum" was influenced by its presence in the phrase " 'maximum term authorized for [certain] categories of defendants.' " Id., at 1404 (bracketed term in original). While acknowledging that the phrase could apply exclusively to that category of repeat offenders for whom the Government filed a notice to seek sentence enhancement, the court also observed that the word "categories" could plausibly be defined "to include all offenders (or all repeat offenders) charged with transgressing the same criminal statute, regardless of whether the prosecution chooses to invoke the sentence-enhancing mechanism against a particular defendant." Id., at 1404-1405 (emphasis added). Under the latter view, the court reasoned, the word "maximum" would necessarily refer to the unenhanced statutory maximum "since this represents the highest possible sentence applicable to all defendants in the category." Id., at 1405.
Based on that perceived ambiguity, the court explained that the "Career Offender Guideline, read through the prism of Amendment 506, adopts an entirely plausible version of the categorical approach that the statute suggests." Id., at 1407. The court thus held that the Career Offender Guideline, as construed under Amendment 506, was a reasonable implementation of § 994(h)'s command to designate sentences at or near the authorized maximum term. Id., at 1409.
In validating Amendment 506, the First Circuit here reached the same conclusion as the Ninth Circuit later did in United States v. Dunn, 80 F. 3d 402, 404 (1996). Five other Courts of Appeals, however, have reached the opposite conclusion, finding Amendment 506 at odds with the plain lan-
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