Page:United States Reports 502 OCT. TERM 1991.pdf/379

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Cite as: 502 U. S. 215 (1991)

221

Opinion of the Court

limitations on reemployment benefits conferred by neighboring provisions, we infer that the simplicity of subsection (d) was deliberate, consistent with a plain meaning to provide its benefit without conditions on length of service. In so concluding we do nothing more, of course, than follow the cardinal rule that a statute is to be read as a whole, see Massachusetts v. Morash, 490 U. S. 107, 115 (1989), since the meaning of statutory language, plain or not, depends on context. See, e. g., Shell Oil Co. v. Iowa Dept. of Revenue, 488 U. S. 19, 26 (1988). “Words are not pebbles in alien juxtaposition; they have only a communal existence; and not only does the meaning of each interpenetrate the other, but all in their aggregate take their purport from the setting in which they are used. . . .” NLRB v. Federbush Co., 121 F. 2d 954, 957 (CA2 1941) (L. Hand, J.) (quoted in Shell Oil, supra, at 25, n. 6).10 St. Vincent’s itself embraces the same principle (though, we think, by way of misapplication) by countering the preceding textual analysis with a structural analysis of its own, in which it purports to discern a significant hierarchy of reemployment rights in the statutory scheme. As the hospital reads § 2024 together with its companion provisions, the most generous protection goes to inductees, whose reemployment rights are unqualified by any reference to duration of service.11 Enlistees and those entering active duty in response to an order or call come next with protection so long favor. Fishgold v. Sullivan Drydock & Repair Corp., 328 U. S. 275, 285 (1946). We will presume congressional understanding of such interpretive principles, e. g., McNary v. Haitian Refugee Center, Inc., 498 U. S. 479, 496 (1991) (“It is presumable that Congress legislates with knowledge of our basic rules of statutory construction”). 10 See also United States v. Hartwell, 6 Wall. 385, 396 (1868) (in construing statute court should adopt that sense of words which best harmonizes with context and promotes policy and objectives of legislature); see generally 2A C. Sands, Sutherland on Statutory Construction § 46.05 (rev. 4th ed. 1984). 11 See 38 U. S. C. § 2021.