474
Syllabus
considerations" the Ninth Circuit invoked are clearly inadequate to defeat the institutional interests the rule advances. Indeed, not a single one of this Court's holdings has ever recognized an exception to the rule. Respondents misconceive the nature of the cross-appeal requirement when they argue that they should not be penalized for failing to cross-appeal from preliminary injunctions because they could raise the same issue on appeal from the final judgment. The requirement is meant not to penalize parties who fail to assert their rights, but to protect institutional interests in the orderly functioning of the judicial system by putting opposing parties and appellate courts on notice of the issues to be litigated and encouraging repose of those that are not. Fairness of notice does not turn on the interlocutory character of the orders at issue here, and the interest in repose, though somewhat diminished when a final appeal may yet raise the issue, is still considerable owing to the indefinite duration of the injunctions. Pp. 479-482.
2. The doctrine of tribal-court exhaustion does not apply in this case, which if brought in a state court would be subject to removal. Pp. 482-488.
(a) This case differs markedly from those in which tribal-court exhaustion is appropriate. By the Price-Anderson Act's unusual preemption provision, 42 U. S. C. § 2014(hh), Congress expressed an unmistakable preference for a federal forum, at the behest of the defending party, both for litigating a Price-Anderson claim on the merits and for determining whether a claim falls under the Act when removal is contested. Petitioners seek the benefit of what is in effect the same scheme of preference for a federal forum when they ask for an injunction against further litigation in the tribal courts. The issue, then, is whether Congress would have chosen to postpone federal resolution of the enjoinable character of this tribal-court litigation, when it would not have postponed federal resolution of the functionally identical issue pending in a state court. Pp. 482-485.
(b) The apparent reasons for the congressional policy of immediate access to federal forums are as much applicable to tribal- as to state-court litigation. The Act provides clear indications of the congressional aims of speed and efficiency in the provisions addressing consolidation and management of cases, e. g., 42 U. S. C. § 2210(n)(3)(A). The Act's terms are underscored by its legislative history, which expressly refers to the multitude of separate cases brought in the aftermath of the Three Mile Island accident and adverts to the expectation that the consolidation provisions would avoid inefficiencies resulting from duplicative determinations of similar issues in multiple jurisdictions. Applying tribal exhaustion would invite precisely the mischief of duplicative determina-
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