436
Opinion of Ginsburg, J.
expected to [be tried] all in one judicial proceeding"). "[C]onsiderations of judicial economy, convenience and fairness to litigants," id., at 726, make it reasonable and proper for the federal forum to proceed beyond the federal question to final judgment once it has invested time and resources on the initial scope-of-employment contest.11
If, in preserving judicial review of scope-of-employment certifications, Congress "approach[ed] the limit" of federal-court jurisdiction, see post, at 441—and we do not believe it did—we find the exercise of federal-court authority involved here less ominous than the consequences of declaring certifications of the kind at issue uncontestable: The local United States Attorney, whose conflict of interest is apparent, would be authorized to make final and binding decisions insulating both the United States and federal employees like Lamagno from liability while depriving plaintiffs of potentially meritorious tort claims. The Attorney General, having weighed the competing considerations, does not read the statute to confer on her such extraordinary authority. Nor should we assume that Congress meant federal courts to accept cases only to stamp them "Dismissed" on an interested executive official's unchallengeable representation. The statute is fairly construed to allow petitioners to present to the Dis-11 The dissent charges that for Congress to allow cases like this one to open and finish in federal court, when brought there by the local United States Attorney, "implies a jurisdictional tenacity," post, at 443, and allows losers always to win, post, at 442. Under the dissent's abstract and unrelenting logic, it is a jurisdictional flight for Congress to assign to federal courts tort actions in which there is a genuine issue of fact whether a federal employee acted within the scope of his federal employment. The dissent's solution for this discrete class of cases: plaintiffs always lose. For the above-stated reasons, we disagree. See also Goldberg-Ambrose, Protective Jurisdiction of the Federal Courts, 30 UCLA L. Rev. 542, 549 (1983) ("If [the legal relationships on which the plaintiff necessarily relies] are federally created, even in small part, the claim should be treated as one that arises under federal law within the meaning of article III, independent of any protective jurisdiction theory.").
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