Cite as: 511 U. S. 863 (1994)
Opinion of the Court
through rigorous application of a final judgment requirement. See generally Van Cauwenberghe, supra, at 524 (" '[T]he substance of the rights entailed, rather than the advantage to a litigant in winning his claim sooner,' " is dispositive) (quoting MacDonald, 435 U. S., at 860, n. 7); Lauro Lines, supra, at 502-503 (Scalia, J., concurring).
While there is no need to decide here that a privately conferred right could never supply the basis of a collateral order appeal, but cf. n. 7, infra (discussing 9 U. S. C. § 16), there are surely sound reasons for treating such rights differently from those originating in the Constitution or statutes. When a policy is embodied in a constitutional or statutory provision entitling a party to immunity from suit (a rare form of protection), there is little room for the judiciary to gainsay its "importance." Including a provision in a private contract, by contrast, is barely a prima facie indication that the right secured is "important" to the benefited party (contracts being replete with boilerplate), let alone that its value exceeds that of other rights not embodied in agreements (e. g., the right to be free from a second suit based on a claim that has already been litigated), or that it qualifies as "important" in Cohen's sense, as being weightier than the societal interests advanced by the ordinary operation of final judgment principles. Where statutory and constitutional rights are concerned, "irretrievabl[e] los[s]" can hardly be trivial, and the collateral order doctrine might therefore be understood as reflecting the familiar principle of statutory construction that, when possible, courts should construe statutes (here § 1291) to foster harmony with other statutory and constitutional law, see, e. g., Ruckelshaus v. Monsanto Co., 467 U. S. 986, 1018 (1984); United States ex rel. Milwaukee Social Democratic Publishing Co. v. Burleson, 255 U. S. 407, 437-438 (1921) (Holmes, J., dissenting). But it is one thing to say that the policy of § 1291 to avoid piecemeal litigation should be reconciled with policies embodied in other statutes or the Constitution, and quite another to suggest that this
879
Page: Index Previous 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007