94
Opinion of the Court
of the Indians with ambiguous provisions interpreted to their benefit." Montana v. Blackfeet Tribe, 471 U. S., at 766; South Carolina v. Catawba Tribe, Inc., 476 U. S. 498, 520 (1986) (Blackmun, J., dissenting). The Tribes point out that our interpretation is not to the Indians' benefit.
Nonetheless, these canons do not determine how to read this statute. For one thing, canons are not mandatory rules. They are guides that "need not be conclusive." Circuit City Stores, Inc. v. Adams, 532 U. S. 105, 115 (2001). They are designed to help judges determine the Legislature's intent as embodied in particular statutory language. And other circumstances evidencing congressional intent can overcome their force. In this instance, to accept as conclusive the canons on which the Tribes rely would produce an interpretation that we conclude would conflict with the intent embodied in the statute Congress wrote. Cf. Choteau v. Burnet, 283 U. S. 691 (1931) (upholding taxation where congressional intent reasonably clear); Superintendent of Five Civilized Tribes v. Commissioner, 295 U. S. 418 (1935) (same); Mescalero Apache Tribe v. Jones, supra (same). In light of the considerations discussed earlier, we cannot say that the statute is "fairly capable" of two interpretations, cf. Montana v. Blackfeet Tribe, supra, at 766, nor that the Tribes' interpretation is fairly "possible."
Specific canons "are often countered . . . by some maxim pointing in a different direction." Circuit City Stores, Inc. v. Adams, supra, at 115. The canon requiring a court to give effect to each word "if possible" is sometimes offset by the canon that permits a court to reject words "as surplus-age" if "inadvertently inserted or if repugnant to the rest of the statute . . . ." K. Llewellyn, The Common Law Tradition 525 (1960). And the latter canon has particular force here where the surplus words consist simply of a numerical cross-reference in a parenthetical. Cf. Cabell Huntington Hospital, Inc. v. Shalala, 101 F. 3d 984, 990 (CA4 1996)
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