Opinion of the Court
no limits, as “ ‘[r]eally, universally, relations stop nowhere.’ ” New York State Conference of Blue Cross & Blue Shield Plans v. Travelers Ins. Co., 514 U. S. 645, 655 (1995) (quoting H. James, Roderick Hudson xli (New York ed., World’s Classics 1980)). This language thus cannot be “considered in isolation,” Maracich v. Spears, 570 U. S. 48, 59 (2013), and the Court must “go beyond the unhelpful text and the frustrating difficulty of defining [this] key term” and look to statutory context. Travelers, 514 U. S., at 656. That the phrase refers to a relationship or nexus of some kind is clear. See Smith, 508 U. S., at 238 (“ ‘[I]n relation to’ ” requires “some purpose or effect” between two things). Yet the kind of relationship required, its nature and strength, will be informed by context.
The presence of two such context-dependent terms renders §1028A(a)(1) doubly attuned to its surroundings. The parties’ competing readings both fall within the range of meanings of “uses” and “in relation to,” taken alone. Resort to context is thus especially necessary here.[1]
- ↑ The Government tries to head off any contextual analysis at the pass, urging that “uses” and “during and in relation to” in §1028A(a)(1) must be read identically to Smith and other of this Court’s cases interpreting 18 U. S. C. §924(c)(1)(A). That provision applies to “any person who, during and in relation to any crime of violence or drug trafficking crime … uses or carries a firearm.” One need look no further than this Court’s §924(c) case law to see why this argument fails. The teaching of those cases is that because “use” “draws meaning from its context, … we will look not only to the word itself, but also to the statute and the [broader] scheme.” Bailey v. United States, 516 U. S. 137, 143 (1995). Section 1028A(a)(1) differs greatly from §924(c), from the thing that is “used,” to the title, to the nature of the predicate offenses to which the enhancement relates. Words can wound, but names and numbers are not guns. If anything, the ubiquity of names and their vast range of “uses” makes the verb especially indeterminate in this context. For that same reason, the Court’s decision today does not alter its §924(c) case law.
