final judgment rule
Definitions from Case Law · United States Supreme Court
Definitions from Case Law
From 369 U.S. 121 - Di Bella v. United States · 1962Most cited · 1,824 citing opinions
The general principle of federal appellate jurisdiction, derived from the common law and enacted by the First Congress, requires that review of nisi prius proceedings await their termination by final judgment. This insistence on finality and prohibition of piecemeal review discourage undue litigiousness and leaden-footed administration of justice, particularly damaging to the conduct of criminal cases.
How often courts cite the case defining “final judgment rule”
Court decisions citing the opinion that defined “final judgment rule” — 1,812 in all, by decade. Counts are citations to the defining case as a whole, not verified uses of the term. The dip in the most recent years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the latest years.