Court Opinion

ID: 9430110
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:28:58.245676+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:23.040448
License: Public Domain

*543Justice Brennan,
with whom Justice Marshall joins,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I join Parts I and II of the Court’s opinion, for I agree that qualified immunity sufficiently protects the legitimate needs of public officials, while retaining a remedy for those whose rights have been violated. Because denial of absolute immunity is immediately appealable, Nixon v. Fitzgerald, 457 U. S. 731, 743 (1982), the issue is squarely before us and, in my view, rightly decided.
I disagree, however, with the Court’s holding that the qualified immunity issue is properly before us. For the purpose of applying the final judgment rule embodied in 28 U. S. C. §1291, I see no justification for distinguishing between the denial of Mitchell’s claim of qualified immunity and numerous other pretrial motions that may be reviewed only on appeal of the final judgment in the case. I therefore dissent from its holding that denials of qualified immunity, at least where they rest on undisputed facts, are generally appealable.
I
The Court acknowledges that the trial court’s refusal to grant Mitchell qualified immunity was not technically the final order possible in the trial court. If the refusal is to be immediately appealable, therefore, it must come within the narrow confines of the collateral order doctrine of Cohen v. Beneficial Industrial Loan Corp., 337 U. S. 541, 546 (1949), and its progeny. Although the Court has, over the years, varied its statement of the Cohen test slightly, the underlying inquiry has remained relatively constant. “[T]he order must conclusively determine the disputed question, resolve an important issue completely separate from the merits of the action, and be effectively unreviewable on appeal from a final judgment.” Coopers & Lybrand v. Livesay, 437 U. S. 463, 468 (1978).
We have always read the Cohen collateral order doctrine narrowly, in part because of the strong policies supporting *544the § 1291 final judgment rule. The rule respects therespon-sibilities of the trial court by enabling it to perform its function without a court of appeals peering over its shoulder every step of the way. It preserves scarce judicial resources that would otherwise be spent in costly and time-consuming appeals. Trial court errors become moot if the aggrieved party nonetheless obtains a final judgment in his favor, and appellate courts need not waste time familiarizing themselves anew with a case each time a partial appeal is taken. Equally important, the final judgment rule removes a potent weapon of harassment and abuse from the hands of litigants. As Justice Frankfurter, writing for the Court in Cobbledick v. United States, 309 U. S. 323, 325 (1940), noted, the rule
“avoid[s] the obstruction to just claims that would come from permitting the harassment and cost of a succession of separate appeals from the various rulings to which a litigation may give rise, from its initiation to entry of judgment. To be effective, judicial administration must not be leaden footed. Its momentum would be arrested by permitting separate reviews of the component elements in a unified cause.”
In many cases in which a claim of right to immediate appeal is asserted, there is a sympathetic appellant who would undoubtedly gain from an immediate review of his individual claim. But lurking behind such cases is usually a vastly larger number of cases in which relaxation of the final judgment rule would threaten all of the salutory purposes served by the rule. Properly applied, the collateral order doctrine is necessary to protect litigants in certain narrow situations. Given the purposes of the final judgment rule, however, we should not relax its constraints unless we can be certain that all three of the Cohen criteria are satisfied. In this case, I find it unnecessary to address the first criterion — finality— because in my view a trial court’s denial of qualified immunity *545is neither “completely separate from the merits” nor “effectively unreviewable on appeal from a final judgment.”
A
Although the qualified immunity question in this suit is not identical to the ultimate question on the merits, the two are quite closely related. The question on the merits is whether Mitchell violated the law when he authorized the wiretap of Davidon’s phone without a warrant. The immunity question is whether Mitchell violated clearly established law when he authorized the wiretap of Davidon’s phone without a warrant. Assuming with the Court that all relevant factual disputes in this case have been resolved, a necessary implication of a holding that Mitchell was not entitled to qualified immunity would be a holding that he is indeed liable. Moreover, a trial court seeking to answer either question would refer to the same or similar cases and statutes, would consult the same treatises and secondary materials, and would undertake a rather similar course of reasoning. At least in the circumstances presented here, the two questions are simply not completely separate.
The close relationship between the immunity and merits questions is not a consequence of the special circumstances of this case. On the Court’s view, there were no issues of material fact between the parties concerning the events surrounding the Davidon wiretap.1 For that reason, both the immunity and the merits questions would be readily decidable on summary judgment. Yet a case with more divergence on the facts would present the same congruence of merits and immunity questions. If, for instance, the parties differed concerning whether Mitchell had in fact authorized the wiretaps, Mitchell would perhaps still have been able to *546move for qualified immunity on the basis of undisputed facts. Nonetheless, even in such a case, the question whether the trial court should grant such a motion would have been closely related to the question whether the trial court should grant Mitchell a summary judgment motion on the merits, and that question is in no sense collateral to the ultimate question on the merits.2
I thus find the application of the second prong of the Cohen test to result in a straightforward preclusion of interlocutory appeal. Our prior cases confirm this result. In the past, we have found, inter alia, double jeopardy claims, Abney v. United States, 481 U. S. 651 (1977), claims of excessive bail, Stack v. Boyle, 342 U. S. 1 (1951), claims of absolute immunity, Nixon v. Fitzgerald, 457 U. S., at 742-743, and disputes concerning whether a defendant was required to post a security bond in certain circumstances, Cohen v. Beneficial Industrial Loan Corp., 337 U. S. 541 (1949), to be separate from the merits of the underlying actions.3 None of these *547issues would necessarily be conclusive or even relevant to the question whether the defendant is ultimately liable on the merits.4 Nor will a decision on any of these questions be likely to require an analysis, research, or decision that is at all related to the merits of the case.
In an attempt to avoid the rigors of the second prong of the collateral order doctrine, the Court holds that “a claim of immunity is conceptually distinct from the merits of the plaintiff’s claim that his rights have been violated.” Ante, at 527-528 (emphasis added). Our previous cases, especially those of recent vintage, have established a more exacting standard. The ordinary formulation is from Coopers & Lybrand; we stated there that an interlocutory order may be considered final for purposes of immediate appeal only if it “resolve[s] an important issue completely separate from the merits of the action.” 437 U. S., at 468 (emphasis added). The Court has used this formulation in Richardson-Merrell Inc. v. Koller, ante, p. 424, Flanagan v. United States, 465 U. S. 259, 265 (1984), United States v. Hollywood Motor Car Co., 458 U. S. 263, 265 (1982) (per curiam), and Firestone Tire & Rubber Co. v. Risjord, 449 U. S. 368, 375 (1981). In Abney v. United States, supra, we described the same factor by noting that the challenged order “resolved an issue com*548pletely collateral to the cause of action asserted. ” Id., at 658 (emphasis added).
Although the precise outlines of the “conceptual distinction” test are not made clear, the only support the Court has for its conclusion is the argument that “[a]ll [an appellate court] need determine is a question of law.” Ante, at 528.5 The underlying assumption of the Court’s “conceptual distinction” test thus seems to be that questions of law are more likely to be separate from the merits of a case than are questions of fact. This seems to me to be entirely wrong; the legal, rather than factual, nature of a given question simply has nothing to do with whether it is separate from the merits. Although an appellate court could provide interlocutory review of legal issues, the final judgment rule embodies Congress’ conclusion that appellate review of interlocutory legal and factual determinations should await final judgment. By focusing on the legal nature of the challenged trial court order, the Court’s test effectively substitutes for the traditional test of completely separate from the merits a vastly less stringent analysis of whether the allegedly appealable issue is not identical to the merits.
Even if something less than complete separability were required, the Court’s toothless standard disserves the im*549portant purposes underlying the separability requirement.6 First, where a pretrial issue is entirely separate from the merits, interlocutory review may cause delay and be unjustified on various grounds, but it at least is unlikely to require repeated appellate review of the same or similar questions. In contrast, where a pretrial issue is closely related to the merits of a case and interlocutory review is permitted, post-judgment appellate review is likely to require the appellate court to reexamine the same or similar legal issues. The Court’s holding today has the effect of requiring precisely this kind of repetitious appellate review. In an interlocutory appeal on the qualified immunity issue, an appellate court must inquire into the legality of the defendant’s underlying conduct. As the Court has recently noted, “[m]ost pretrial orders of district judges are ultimately affirmed by appellate courts.” Richardson-Merrell Inc. v. Koller, ante, at 434. Thus, if the trial court is, as usual, affirmed, the appellate court must repeat the process on final judgment. Although I agree with the Court that the legal question in each review would be “conceptually” different, the connection between the research, analysis, and decision of each of the issues is apparent; much of the work in reviewing the final judgment would be duplicative.
A second purpose of the separability requirement derives from our recognition that resolution of even the most abstract legal disputes is advanced by the presence of a con*550crete set of facts. If appeal is put off until final judgment, the fuller development of the facts at that stage will assist the appellate court in its disposition of the case. Simply put, an appellate court is best able to decide whether given conduct was prohibited by established law if the record in the case contains a full description of that conduct. See Kenyatta v. Moore, 744 F. 2d 1179, 1185-1186 (CA5 1984).
In short, the Court’s “conceptual distinction” test for separability finds no support in our cases and fails to serve the underlying purposes of the final judgment rule. To the extent it requires that only trial court orders concerning matters of law be appealable, it requires only what I had thought was a condition of any appellate review, interlocutory or otherwise. The additional thrust of the test seems to be that an appealable order must not be identical to the merits of the case. If the test for separability is to be this weak, I see little profit in maintaining the fiction that it remains a prerequisite to interlocutory appeal.
B
The Court states that “[a]t the heart of the issue before us,” ante, at 525, is the third prong of the Cohen test: whether the order is effectively unreviewable upon ultimate termination of the proceedings. The Court holds that, because the right to qualified immunity includes a right not to stand trial unless the plaintiff can make a material issue of fact on the question of whether the defendant violated clearly established law, it cannot be effectively vindicated after trial. Cf. Abney v. United States, 431 U. S. 651 (1977).
If a given defense to liability in fact encompasses a right not to stand trial under the specified circumstances, one’s right to that defense is effectively unreviewable on appeal from final judgment. For instance, if one’s right to summary judgment under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56 were characterized as a right not to stand trial where the op*551posing party has failed to create a genuine issue of material fact, denials of summary judgment motions would be immediately appealable, at least under the third prong of the Cohen test. Similarly, if the statute of limitations gave defendants a right not to be tried out of time, denial of a statute of limitations defense would be immediately appealable insofar as the third Cohen test is concerned. Similar results would follow with a host of constitutional (e. g., right to jury trial, right to due process), statutory (e. g., venue, necessary parties), or other rights; if the right be characterized as a right not to stand trial except in certain circumstances, it follows ineluctably that the right cannot be vindicated on final judgment.
The point, of course, is that the characterization of the right at issue determines the legal result. In each case, therefore, a careful inquiry must be undertaken to determine whether it is necessary to characterize the right at issue as a right not to stand trial. The final judgment rule presupposes that each party must abide by the trial court’s judgments until the end of the proceedings before gaining the opportunity for appellate review. To hold that a given legal claim is in fact an immunity from trial is to except a privileged class from undergoing the regrettable cost of a trial. We should not do so lightly.
The Court states that Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U. S. 800 (1982), extended the qualified immunity doctrine in part to avoid imposition of “the general costs of subjecting officials to the risks of trial — distraction of officials from their governmental duties, inhibition of discretionary action, and deterrence of able people from public service.” Id., at 816. In Harlow, however, we chose to advance this purpose by modifying the substantive standards governing qualified immunity. By making the defense easier to prove on a summary judgment motion, Harlow did relieve many officials of undergoing the costs of trial. Yet Harlow fails to answer the question before the Court today: Having given extra protection to public officials by adjusting liability standards *552in Harlow, need we in addition take the extraordinary step of excepting such officials from the operation of the final judgment rule?
The Court advances three grounds in support of its result. First, it notes that a defendant government official is entitled to dismissal if the plaintiff fails to state a claim of violation of clearly established law. Ante, at 526. This, although true, merely restates the standard of liability recognized in Harlow; it fails to justify the additional step taken by the Court today. Second, the Court states that a defendant official is entitled to summary judgment if the plaintiff is unable to create a genuine issue of material fact on this issue. This is also true, but again merely restates the ordinary standard for summary judgment under Rule 56(c).7 Finally, the Court declares that “[t]he entitlement is an immunity from suit rather than a mere defense to liability,” and is thus lost if a case is erroneously permitted to go to trial. Ante, at 526. Although the Court may believe that italicizing the words “immunity from suit” clarifies its rationale, I doubt that the ordinary characterization of a wide variety of legal claims as “immunities”8 establishes that trial court orders rejecting *553such claims are necessarily unreviewable at the termination of proceedings.
In my view, a sober assessment of the interests protected by the qualified immunity defense counsels against departing from normal procedural rules when the defense is asserted. The Court claims that subjecting officials to trial may lead to “ ‘distraction of officials from their governmental duties, inhibition of discretionary action, and deterrence of able people from public service.’” Ante, at 526, quoting Harlow v. Fitzgerald, supra, at 816. Even if I agreed with the Court that in the post -Harlow environment these evils were all real, I could not possibly agree that they justify the Court’s conclusion. These same ill results would flow from an adverse decision on any dispositive preliminary issue in a lawsuit against an official defendant — whether based on a statute of limitations, collateral estoppel, lack of jurisdiction, or the like. A trial court is often able to resolve these issues with considerable finality, and the trial court’s decision on such questions may often be far more separable from the merits than is a qualified immunity ruling. Yet I hardly think the Court is prepared to hold that a government official suffering an adverse ruling on any of these issues would be entitled to an immediate appeal.
In any event, I do not think that the evils suggested by the Court pose a significant threat, given the liability standards established in Harlow. We held in Harlow that “government officials performing discretionary functions, generally are shielded from liability for civil damages insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.” 457 U. S., at 818. I have no doubt that trial judges employing this standard will have little difficulty in achieving Harlow’s goal of early dismissal of frivolous *554or insubstantial lawsuits. The question is whether anything is to be gained by permitting interlocutory appeal in the remaining cases that would otherwise proceed to trial.
Such cases will predictably be of two types. Some will be cases in which the official did violate a clearly established legal norm. In these cases, nothing is to be gained by permitting interlocutory appeal because they should proceed as expeditiously as possible to trial. The rest will be cases in which the official did not violate a clearly established legal norm. Given the nature of the qualified immunity determination, I would expect that these will tend to be quite close cases, in which the defendant violated a legal norm but in which it is questionable whether that norm was clearly established. Many of these cases may well be appealable as certified interlocutory appeals under 28 U. S. C. § 1292(b) or, less likely, on writ of mandamus. Cf. Firestone Tire & Rubber Co. v. Risjord, 449 U. S., at 378, n. 13; Coopers & Lybrand v. Livesay, 437 U. S., at 474-475. It is only in the remaining cases that the Court’s decision today offers the hope of an otherwise unavailable pretrial reversal. Out of this class of cases, interlocutory appeal is beneficial only in that still smaller subclass in which the trial court’s judgment is reversed.
The question is thus whether the possibly beneficial effects of avoiding trial in this small subset of cases justify the .Court’s declaration that the right to qualified immunity is a right not to stand trial at all. The benefits seem to me to be rather small. Most meritless cases will be dismissed at the early stages, thus minimizing the extent to which officials are distracted from their duties. Officials aware of the extensive protection offered by qualified immunity would be deterred only from activities in which there is at least a strong scent of illegality; deterrence from many such activities (those that are clearly unlawful) is precisely one of the goals of official liability. Finally, I cannot take seriously the Court’s suggestion that officials who would otherwise be deterred from taking public office will have their confidence *555restored by the possibility that mistaken trial court qualified immunity rulings in some small class of cases that might be brought against them will be overturned on appeal before trial.
Even if there were some benefits to be gained by granting officials a right to immediate appeal, a rule allowing immediate appeal imposes enormous costs on plaintiffs and on the judicial system as a whole.9 Most claims entitled to immediate appeal have a self-limiting quality. See United States v. MacDonald, 435 U. S. 850, 862 (1978) (relying in part on the fact that “there is nothing about the circumstances that will support a speedy trial claim which inherently limits the availability of the claim” to find it not appealable). Double jeopardy claims, for instance, are available only to criminal defendants who have been previously tried. Similarly, the interlocutory civil appeals the Court permitted in Cohen are obviously limited to a small number of cases. See also Helstoski v. Meanor, 442 U. S. 500 (1979) (Speech and Debate Clause immunity); Swift & Co. Packers v. Compania Colombiana Del Caribe, 339 U. S. 684 (1950) (order denying attachment of ship); Roberts v. United States District Court, 339 U. S. 844 (1950) (per curiam) (order denying right to proceed informa pauperis). Although absolute immunity is perhaps a more widely available claim, its ambit nonetheless remains restricted to officials performing a few extremely sensitive functions. See, e. g., Nixon v. Fitzgerald, 457 U. S. 731 (1982) (the President); Imbler v. Pachtman, 424 U. S. 409 (1976) (prosecutors); Pierson v. Ray, 386 U. S. 547 (1967) (judges); Tenney v. Brandhove, 341 U. S. 367 (1951) (legislators). In contrast, the right to interlocutory appeal recognized today is generally available to (and can be expected to be widely pursued by) virtually any governmental *556official who is sued in his personal capacity,10 regardless of the merits of his claim to qualified immunity or the strength of the claim against him. As a result, I fear that today’s decision will give government officials a potent weapon to use against plaintiffs, delaying litigation endlessly with interlocutory appeals.11 The Court’s decision today will result in denial of full and speedy justice to those plaintiffs with strong claims on the merits and a relentless and unnecessary increase in the caseload of the appellate courts.
HH HH
Even if I agreed with the Court s conclusion that denials of qualified immunity that rest on undisputed facts were immediately appealable and further agreed with its conclusion that Mitchell was entitled to qualified immunity,12 I could not agree with the Court’s mischaracterization of the proceedings in this case to find that Mitchell was entitled to summary judgment on the qualified immunity issue. From the outset, Forsyth alleged that the Davidon wiretap was not a national security wiretap, but was instead a simple attempt to spy on political opponents. This created an issue of fact as to the nature of the wiretap in question, an issue that the trial court never resolved. To hold on this record that Mitchell was entitled to summary judgment is either to engage in de novo factfinding — an exercise that this Court has neither the authority nor the resources to do — or intentionally to disregard the record below to achieve a particular result in this case.
*557The Court purports to find two justifications for its conclusion that the trial court in fact resolved this issue in Mitchell’s favor. It states: “The District Court held a hearing on the purpose of the wiretap and took Mitchell at his word that the wiretap was a national security interception, not a prosecuto-rial function for which absolute immunity was recognized.” Ante, at 535, n. 13. This is true, but fails to demonstrate any resolution of the disputed factual issue. In its 1982 ruling, the trial court indeed said that it “has taken defendant Mitchell at his word” when he claimed that he approved the Davidon wiretaps as part of a national security investigation. App. to Pet. for Cert. 59a. In this section of its opinion, reproduced id,., at 56a-60a, the trial court was determining whether Mitchell was entitled to absolute immunity as a prosecutor in authorizing the Davidon wiretap. Thus, two paragraphs below the quoted statement, the trial court said:
“[R]egardless of whether the Davidon wiretap was motivated by a legitimate national security concern or a good faith belief that there existed a legitimate national security concern, as the defendants contend, or was an invasion of the privacy of political dissidents conducted under the guise of national security, as the plaintiff contends, there is no doubt that defendant Mitchell has consistently taken the position that the Davidon tap ‘arose in the context of a purely investigative or administrative function’ on his part.” Id., at 59a (emphasis added).
The trial court quite properly took Mitchell “at his word” for purposes of ruling against him on his prosecutorial immunity claim. It would have been quite improper for the court to take Mitchell “at his word” for any other purpose, and the court never made its own finding of fact on the disputed issue.
The Court also attempts to construct an argument that the trial court, as a matter of logic, must have made the finding of fact in question. Otherwise, according to the Court, “the *558qualified immunity question would never have been reached, for the tap would clearly have been illegal under Title III, and qualified immunity hence unavailable.” Ante, at 535, n. 13. The Court’s argument seems to be that the trial court should have decided the legality of the wiretap under Title III before going on to the qualified immunity question, since that question arises only when considering the legality of the wiretap under the Constitution. Perhaps the trial court should have proceeded as the Court wants, although the question is not nearly so simple as the Court suggests, and I would have thought that a trial court in a complicated case must be accorded great discretion in determining its order of decision. At any rate, speculations as to what the trial court ought to have decided and in what order are irrelevant; Forsyth surely should not forfeit his legal claim because (arguably) the trial court went about its task inartfully. There is not a word in this record to suggest that the trial court actually made any determination on the disputed issue. I am thus at a loss to understand on what legal principle, aside from sympathy for the defendant or hostility to the plaintiff, the Court bases its decision that Mitchell was entitled to summary judgment.
I dissent.

 As I point out in Part II, infra, the Court’s view seriously misrepresents the dispute between the parties.

 1 thus do not believe that mere “factual .overlap,” ante, at 529, n. 10, is sufficient to show lack of separability. Rather, it is the legal overlap between the qualified immunity question and the merits of the case that renders the two questions inseparable. As the text makes clear, when a trial court renders a qualified immunity decision on a summary judgment motion, it must make a legal determination very similar to the legal determination it must make on a summary judgment motion on the merits. Similarly, there may be cases in which, after all of the evidence has been introduced, the defendant official moves for a directed verdict on the ground that the evidence actually produced at trial has failed to make a factual issue of the question whether the defendant violated clearly established law. The trial court’s decision on the defendant’s directed verdict motion would involve legal questions quite similar to a motion by the defendant for a directed verdict on the merits of the case. The point is that, regardless of when the defendant raises the qualified immunity issue, it is similar to the question on the merits at the same stage of the trial. In contrast, the trial court’s decision on absolute immunity or double jeopardy — at whatever stage it arises — will ordinarily not raise a legal question that is the same, or even similar, to the question on the merits of the case.

 See also Helstoski v. Meanor, 442 U. S. 500 (1979) (claim of immunity under Speech and Debate Clause); Eisen v. Carlisle & Jacquelin, 417 *547U. S. 156 (1974) (order allocating costs of notice in class action); Swift & Co. Packers v. Compania Colombiana Del Caribe, 339 U. S. 684 (1950) (order vacating attachment of ship in maritime case); Roberts v. United States District Court, 339 U. S. 844 (1950) (order denying in forma paupe-ris status).

 1 do not suggest, as the Court seems to think, that double jeopardy or absolute immunity rulings are not “controlling” of the question whether the defendant will ultimately be liable. See ante, at 528, n. 9. Rather, these rulings are not generally conclusive or relevant to the question whether the defendant is liable on the merits. Of course double jeopardy or absolute immunity rulings can be outcome determinative, as could a ruling on qualified immunity — or on the application of a statute of limitations, a claim of improper venue, lack of subject-matter jurisdiction, failure to join an indispensable party, or the like. The question to be answered is not whether a given issue is outcome determinative, but whether its resolution is closely related to the resolution of the merits of the case.

 The Court also states that “[a]n appellate court reviewing the denial of the defendant’s claim of immunity need not consider the correctness of the plaintiff’s version of the facts, nor even determine whether the plaintiff’s allegations actually state a claim.” Ante, at 528. The first part of this statement is correct, and would equally be true of any motion for judgment on the pleadings. Yet I have never seen a plausible argument that a motion for judgment on the pleadings is immediately appealable, in part because such a motion is plainly not separable from the merits of the case. The second part of the statement is also correct, and does indeed explain the difference between a qualified immunity determination and an ordinary motion for judgment on the pleadings or summary judgment motion. Yet the fact that a qualified immunity determination is different in some respect from a judgment on the pleadings is hardly ground for a finding that it is sufficiently separate to be immediately appealable.

 The “conceptual distinction” test is also inconsistent with the Court’s decision in Richardson-Merrell Inc. v. Koller, ante, p. 424. The Court here notes that “a question of immunity is separate from the merits of the underlying action for purposes of the Cohen test even though a reviewing court must consider the plaintiff’s factual allegations in resolving the immunity issue.” Ante, at 528-529. Yet the Richardson-Merrell Court evidently believes that the attorney disqualification issue is not separable from the merits because the court of appeals must evaluate, inter alia, “respondent’s claim on the merits, [and] the relevance of the alleged instances of misconduct to the attorney’s zealous pursuit of that claim.” Ante, at 440.

 “The judgment sought [in a summary judgment motion] shall be rendered forthwith if the pleadings, depositions, answers to interrogatories, and admissions on file, together with the affidavits, if any, show that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that the moving party is entitled to a judgment as a matter of law.” Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 56(c).

 The numerous legal rights traditionally recognized as immunities include everything from the now-dormant charitable immunity in tort law, W. Keeton, D. Dobbs, R. Keeton, & D. Owen, Prosser and Keeton on Law of Torts § 133 (5th ed. 1984), to the state-action immunity in antitrust law, see Parker v. Brown, 317 U. S. 341 (1943), and the doctrine of sovereign immunity. Federal statutes also contain numerous provisions granting immunities. See, e. g., 15 U. S. C. § 78iii(b) (good-faith immunity for self-regulatory organizations from liability for disclosures relating to financial difficulties of certain securities dealers); 33 U. S. C. § 1483 (immunity for foreign government vessels from pollution control remedies); 46 U. S. C. § 1304 (immunities of carrier of goods by sea); 46 U. S. C. App. § 1706 *553(1982 ed., Supp. Ill) (immunity from antitrust laws for certain agreements among carriers of goods by sea).

 It also imposes costs on the defendant officials and the public. Those who pursue interlocutory appeals can be expected ordinarily to lose. See Richardson-Merrell Inc. v. Koller, ante, p. 424. Permitting an interlocutory appeal will thus in most cases merely divert officials from their duties for an even longer time than if no such appeals were available.

 Of course, an official sued in his official capacity may not take advantage of a qualified immunity defense. See Brandon v. Holt, 469 U. S. 464 (1985).

 The instant case is an apt illustration. The proceedings in the trial court would likely have concluded in 1979 were it not for the two interlocutory appeals filed by the Government.

 Given my conclusion that the Court of Appeals had no jurisdiction over Mitchell’s interlocutory appeal, I need not reach the issue of whether he was entitled to qualified immunity.