Cite as: 520 U. S. 751 (1997)
Breyer, J., dissenting
U. S. C. § 3553(b). And, most important, it authorizes a higher sentence should the Commission decide to write other Guidelines with specific offense characteristics that tell a judge to sentence certain especially dangerous recidivists (say, violent drug offenders) to more than the first offender maximums. See, e. g., USSG § 2D1.1(a)(1).
The upshot is that the majority cannot find here, or anywhere else in sentencing law, a clear indication of what Congress must have meant by its open-ended term "authorized." The term is ambiguous.
III
Although the Court does not "decide whether the Commission is owed deference under Chevron," ante, at 762, n. 6, I believe that it is. Chevron directs courts to defer to "an agency's construction of the statute which it administers," 467 U. S., at 842, when Congress, because it has not clearly addressed an issue in the statute itself, likely intends that the consequent
"ambiguity would be resolved, first and foremost, by the agency, and desired the agency (rather than the courts) to possess whatever degree of discretion the ambiguity allows. See Chevron, supra, at 843-844." Smiley v. Citibank (South Dakota), N. A., 517 U. S., at 741.
This kind of inference makes sense in this case. Although the Commission is in the "judicial branch" of Government, 28 U. S. C. § 991(a); Mistretta, 488 U. S., at 384-397, Congress intended it to carry out a task similar to rulemaking tasks that Congress has often delegated to administrative agencies. The Commission's overall congressional mandate is sweeping. See 28 U. S. C. § 994(f) ("providing certainty and fairness in sentencing and reducing unwarranted sentence disparities"); § 991(b). Without broad delegated authority, it would not be possible to reconcile Congress' general objectives—of uniformity, proportionality, and administrability— nor to reconcile those general objectives with a host of more
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