410
Breyer, J., dissenting
Day 110. The "consolidation" subsection tells the court of appeals to consolidate those two appeals and decide them together. (In fact, the alien might well have informed the court of appeals, say on Day 70, about the reconsideration motion, in which case the court, unless it thought the motion a frivolous stalling device, might have postponed decision on the merits of the initial appeal, awaiting the results of the reconsideration decision, an appeal from which it could then consolidate with the initial appeal. See, e. g., Gebremichael v. INS, 10 F. 3d 28, 33, n. 13 (CA1 1993) (decision on appeal stayed until the agency resolved alien's motion for reconsideration; initial appeal then consolidated with the appeal from the denial of rehearing).) In this example, the subsection would have meaning as an "exception" to the Hobbs Act, cf. ante, at 404-405, since nothing in the Hobbs Act requires the consolidation of court reviews.
The majority understands this counterexample, but rejects it, for fear of creating both a conceptual and a precedential problem. Neither of those perceived problems, however, is significant. The conceptual problem the majority fears arises out of the fact that, under the ordinary tolling rule, the filing of a petition for reconsideration is deemed to render an otherwise "final" initial (but not-yet-appealed) order "nonfinal" for purposes of court review. Hence, one may not appeal the merits of that initial order until the district court or agency finally decides the reconsideration petition. The majority believes that the reconsideration petition in the counterexample above (a petition filed after an appeal is taken from the initial order) also renders "nonfinal," and hence not properly appealable, the initial order, removing the initial appeal from the court of appeals, and thereby leaving nothing to consolidate.
The answer to this conceptual argument lies in the "general principle" that "jurisdiction, once vested, is not divested, although a state of things should arrive in which original jurisdiction could not be exercised." United States v. The
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