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Opinion of the Court
decision of an Article III court. In light of the constitutional questions which would surround such an arrangement, see Gordon, supra; Hayburn's Case, 2 Dall. 409 (1792), we should avoid any such implication.
We further disagree with the contention, advanced by the dissent and by Court-appointed amicus, that a request to proceed before a court of appeals should be regarded as a threshold inquiry separate from the merits which, if denied, prevents the case from ever being in the court of appeals. Precedent forecloses this argument. In Ex parte Quirin, 317 U. S. 1 (1942), we confronted the analogous question whether a request for leave to file a petition for a writ of habeas corpus was a case in a district court for the purposes of the then-extant statute governing court of appeals review of district court decisions. See 28 U. S. C. § 225(a) First (1940 ed.) (courts of appeals had jurisdiction to review final decisions "[i]n the district courts, in all cases save where a direct review of the decision may be had in the Supreme Court"). We held the request for leave constituted a case in the district court over which the court of appeals could assert jurisdiction, even though the district court had denied the request. We reasoned, "[p]resentation of the petition for judicial action is the institution of a suit. Hence the denial by the district court of leave to file the petitions in these causes was the judicial determination of a case or controversy, reviewable on appeal to the Court of Appeals." 317 U. S., at 24.
We reached a similar conclusion in Nixon v. Fitzgerald. There President Nixon sought to appeal an interlocutory District Court order rejecting his claim of absolute immunity. The Court of Appeals summarily dismissed the appeal because, in its view, the order failed to present a "serious and unsettled question" of law sufficient to bring the case within the collateral order doctrine announced in Cohen v. Beneficial Industrial Loan Corp., 337 U. S. 541, 547 (1949). Because the Court of Appeals had dismissed for failure to
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