Cite as: 503 U. S. 249 (1992)
Opinion of the Court
domain, which he defines as the universe of orders issued by district courts sitting pursuant to § 158(a) as courts of appeals in bankruptcy. When a district court enters an order in that capacity, Germain concludes, only § 158(d) can confer jurisdiction, and if it does not, nothing else can. Germain claims to find support for his view in his reading of the legislative history of § 158(d).
Contrary to Germain's contention, we need not choose between giving effect on the one hand to § 1291 and on the other to § 158(d), for the statutes do not pose an either-or proposition. Section 1291 confers jurisdiction over appeals from "final decisions of the district courts" acting in any capacity. Section 158(d), in contrast, confers jurisdiction over appeals from final decisions of the district courts when they act as bankruptcy appellate courts under § 158(a), and also confers jurisdiction over final decisions of the appellate panels in bankruptcy acting under § 158(b). Sections 1291 and 158(d) do overlap, therefore, but each section confers jurisdiction over cases that the other section does not reach.
Redundancies across statutes are not unusual events in drafting, and so long as there is no "positive repugnancy" between two laws, Wood v. United States, 16 Pet. 342, 363 (1842), a court must give effect to both. Because giving effect to both §§ 1291 and 158(d) would not render one or the other wholly superfluous, we do not have to read § 158(d) as precluding courts of appeals, by negative implication, from exercising jurisdiction under § 1291 over district courts sitting in bankruptcy. We similarly do not have to read § 158(d) as precluding jurisdiction under § 1292. While courts should disfavor interpretations of statutes that render language superfluous, in this case that canon does not apply.
In any event, canons of construction are no more than rules of thumb that help courts determine the meaning of legislation, and in interpreting a statute a court should always turn first to one, cardinal canon before all others. We have stated time and again that courts must presume that a
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