Cite as: 524 U. S. 236 (1998)
Scalia, J., dissenting
any more than a "case or controversy" for purposes of initial federal-court jurisdiction is created by a dispute over venue, between parties who agree on everything else.1
As is true with most erroneous theories, a logical and consistent application of the Court's reasoning yields strange results. If dispute over the propriety of granting a COA creates a "case," the denial of a COA request that has been unopposed (or, better yet, has been supported by the Government) will be unreviewable, whereas denial of a request that is vigorously opposed will be reviewed—surely an upside-down result. And the "case" concerning the COA will subsist even when the § 2255 suit has been mooted by the petitioner's release from prison. These bizarre consequences follow inevitably from the Court's "separate case" theory, which has been fabricated in order to achieve a result that is fundamentally at odds with the purpose of the statute. For the Court insists upon assuming, contrary to the plain import of the statute, that Congress wanted petitioner's § 2255 action to proceed "in the ordinary course of the judicial process" and to follow the "general rule" that permits an appeal from a final district court order, ibid. If this were Congress's wish, there would have been no need for § 102 of AEDPA. The whole point of that provision is to diverge from the ordinary course of the judicial process and to keep petitioner's case against respondent out of the Court of Appeals unless petitioner obtains a COA. "The certificate is a screening device, helping to conserve judicial (and prosecutorial) resources." Young v. United States, 124 F. 3d 794, 799
1 The Court has no response to this. Its observation that a dispute over venue is not unreviewable simply because it is preliminary, ante, at 248- 249, is accurate but irrelevant. The issue is not whether a venue dispute may be reviewed at all, but whether it may be reviewed in isolation from some case of which it is a part. It may not, because a venue dispute, standing alone—like a request for a COA, standing alone—lacks the requisite qualities of a case. If the entire § 2255 proceeding was not "in" the Court of Appeals, the COA request alone was not a "case" that § 1254 authorizes us to review.
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