710
Opinion of the Court
likely to have meant to compel the courts to wash their hands of the worst cases at the end of reimprisonment.10
The idea that a sentencing court should have authority to subject a reincarcerated prisoner to further supervised release has support, moreover, in the pre-Guidelines practice with respect to nondetentive monitoring, as illuminated in United States v. O'Neil, 11 F. 3d 292 (CA1 1993). The Sentencing Guidelines, after all, "represent an approach that begins with, and builds upon," pre-Guidelines law, see USSG, ch. 1, pt. A, intro. comment. 3, and when a new legal regime develops out of an identifiable predecessor, it is reasonable to look to the precursor in fathoming the new law. Cf. INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca, 480 U. S. 421, 432-434 (1987) (examining practice under precursor statute to determine meaning of amended statute).
Two sorts of nondetentive monitoring existed before the introduction of supervised release: probation and parole. Of these pre-Guidelines options, the one more closely analogous
10 Justice Scalia attributes the strong preference for supervised release at the conclusion of a prison term to this Court, post, at 724, when that view of penal policy comes not from the Court but from Congress. The point is crucial. Our obligation is to give effect to congressional purpose so long as the congressional language does not itself bar that result. See, e. g., Holloway v. United States, 526 U. S. 1, 9 (1999) (noting that statutory language should be interpreted in light of congressional policy); Caron v. United States, 524 U. S. 308, 315 (1998) (rejecting petitioner's reading of a statute because it "yields results contrary to a likely, and rational, congressional policy"). One who believes that courts must not look beyond text might well find any invocation of policy unjustified (even willful), at least when the policy does not rise unbidden from the words of the statute, but we have never treated the text as such a jealous guide and have traditionally sought to construe a statute so as to reach results consistent with what Chief Justice Taney called "its object and policy." See United States v. Heirs of Boisdoré, 8 How. 113, 122 (1849). And in what Chief Justice Marshall called the attempt "to discover the design of the legislature," we have "seize[d] every thing from which aid can be derived." United States v. Fisher, 2 Cranch 358, 386 (1805).
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