Cite as: 515 U. S. 417 (1995)
Opinion of O'Connor, J.
trict Court their objections to the Attorney General's scope-of-employment certification, and we hold that construction the more persuasive one.
* * *
For the reasons stated, the judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit is reversed, and the case is remanded for proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Justice O'Connor, concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.
For the reasons given in Parts I-III of the Court's opinion, which I join, I agree with the Court (and the Attorney General) that the Attorney General's scope-of-employment certifications in Westfall Act cases should be judicially reviewable. I do not join Part IV of the opinion, however. That discussion all but conclusively resolves a difficult question of federal jurisdiction that, as Justice Ginsburg notes, is not presented in this case. Ante, at 435. In my view, we should not resolve that question until it is necessary for us to do so.
Of course, I agree with the dissent, post, at 441, that we ordinarily should construe statutes to avoid serious constitutional questions, such as that discussed in Part IV of the Court's opinion, when it is fairly possible to do so. See United States v. X-Citement Video, Inc., 513 U. S. 64, 78 (1994); Rust v. Sullivan, 500 U. S. 173, 223-225 (1991) (O'Connor, J., dissenting). And I recognize that reversing the Court of Appeals' judgment in this case may make it impossible to avoid deciding that question in a future case. But even such an important canon of statutory construction as that favoring the avoidance of serious constitutional questions does not always carry the day. In this case, as described in detail by the Court, ante, at 423-434, several other important legal principles, including the presumption in
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