Opinion of the Court
view further bolsters our understanding of the IOIA’s immunity provision.
D
The IFC argues that interpreting the IOIA’s immunity provision to grant anything less than absolute immunity would lead to a number of undesirable results.
The IFC first contends that affording international organizations only restrictive immunity would defeat the purpose of granting them immunity in the first place. Allowing international organizations to be sued in one member country’s courts would in effect allow that member to second-guess the collective decisions of the others. It would also expose international organizations to money damages, which would in turn make it more difficult and expensive for them to fulfill their missions. The IFC argues that this problem is especially acute for international development banks. Because those banks use the tools of commerce to achieve their objectives, they may be subject to suit under the FSIA’s commercial activity exception for most or all of their core activities, unlike foreign sovereigns. According to the IFC, allowing such suits would bring a flood of foreign-plaintiff litigation into U. S. courts, raising many of the same foreign-relations con-
918 (1980) (“By virtue of the FSIA, and unless otherwise specified in their constitutive agreements, international organizations are now subject to the jurisdiction of our courts in respect of their commercial activities, while retaining immunity for their acts of a public character.”); Letter from Arnold Kanter, Acting Secretary of State, to President George H. W. Bush (Sept. 12, 1992) in Digest of United States Practice in International Law 1016–1017 (S. Cummins & D. Stewart eds. 2005) (explaining that the Headquarters Agreement of the Organization of American States affords the OAS “full immunity from judicial process, thus going beyond the usual United States practice of affording restrictive immunity,” in exchange for assurances that OAS would provide for “appropriate modes of settlement of those disputes for which jurisdiction would exist against a foreign government under the” FSIA); Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 24–29.
