722
Scalia, J., dissenting
part of the term of supervised release to be served in prison, with the rest of the term remaining in place to be served on supervised release. In the text actually adopted, however, the supervised-release term is not left in place, but is explicitly "revoked." 5
Further, if one assumes, as the Court does, that a revoked term somehow "survives the . . . order of revocation," ante, at 705, and retains effect (even without any statutory authorization for reimposition or reactivation), then it would follow that whatever part of it is not required to be served in prison is necessarily still in effect. Thus the district court would have no discretion not to require the remainder of the term to be served on supervised release. Yet the Court seems to view further supervised release as only an "option." Ante, at 704, 713, n. 13; accord, ante, at 713-714 (Kennedy, J., concurring in part).
The Court's confusing discussion of how § 3583(a) would produce consequences similar to those its opinion achieves— and consequences that are entirely reasonable—if § 3583(e)(3) read differently from the way it does read, ante, at 707-708, is entirely irrelevant. I do not contend that the result the Court reaches is any way remarkable, only that it is not the result called for by the statute. The Court carefully does not maintain—and it could not, for reasons I need not describe—that subsection (a) justifies imposition of post-5 The concurrence adjusts for that inconvenient fact by simply changing the object of the verb, concluding that "after the right to be on supervised release has been revoked there is yet an unexpired term of supervised release that can be allocated . . . in whole or in part to confinement and to release . . . ." Ante, at 713 (Kennedy, J., concurring in part) (emphasis added). The statute, however, does not revoke "the right to be on supervised release"; it revokes the "term of supervised release" itself, see § 3583(e)(3), which is utterly incompatible with the notion that the term remains in place. Switching the object of "revoke" is no fair in itself, and it leaves the provision entirely redundant, since revoking "the right to be on supervised release" adds nothing to "requir[ing] the person to serve in prison all or part of the term," § 3583(e)(3).
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