Cite as: 529 U. S. 694 (2000)
Scalia, J., dissenting
The Court opines that no authorization for further supervised release is needed, because the fact that the district court may require "all or part of the term of supervised release" to be served in prison demonstrates that the revoked term continues to have some metaphysical effect, ante, at 705-706, so that "the balance of it [can] remain effective as a term of supervised release when the reincarceration is over," ante, at 706. It demonstrates no such thing. In allowing the district court to require that "all or part of the term of supervised release" be spent in prison, the statute simply describes the length of the permitted imprisonment by reference to that now-defunct term of supervised release. It is quite beyond me how the Court can believe that the statute "does not read" this way, ante, at 706, n. 8, and the concurrence that "[t]his . . . is not what the text says," ante, at 714. A "term of supervised release" in what might be called the substantive rather than the temporal sense—i. e., the sentence to a period of supervised release—cannot possibly be served in prison. To be in prison is not to be released. The only sense in which "all or part of the term of supervised release" can be served in prison is the temporal sense. Cf. United States v. Johnson, ante, at 57 ("To say respondent was released while still imprisoned diminishes the concept the word intends to convey"). The Court's unrealistic reading is also undermined by the fact that § 3583(g) provides for serving in prison part of "the term of supervised release," in spite of the fact that the term there has been "terminated," so that even the Court would not claim it has ongoing vitality. See n. 2, supra. And finally, in concluding that the term of supervised release remains in place, the Court essentially reads the phrase "revoke a term of supervised release" out of the statute, treating the subsection as if it did no more than authorize the court to "require the person to serve in prison all or part of the term of supervised release" originally imposed, § 3583(e)(3). Of course the statute could have been drafted to say just that—allowing the court to require
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