Page:Türkiye Halk Bankasi A.Ş. v. United States.pdf/2

Syllabus

in civil actions against foreign states and their instrumentalities does not cover criminal cases. Pp. 5–14.

(a) The doctrine of foreign sovereign immunity originally developed in U. S. courts “as a matter of common law” rather than statute. Samantar v. Yousuf, 560 U. S. 305, 311. In 1976, Congress enacted the FSIA, which prescribed a “comprehensive set of legal standards governing claims of immunity in every civil action against a foreign state.” Verlinden B. V. v. Central Bank of Nigeria, 461 U. S. 480, 488. The text of the FSIA indicates that the statute exclusively addresses civil suits. The first provision grants district courts original jurisdiction over “any nonjury civil action against a foreign state” as to “any claim for relief in personam with respect to which the foreign state is not entitled to immunity.” 28 U. S. C. §1330(a). The FSIA then sets forth a carefully calibrated set of procedures and remedies applicable exclusively in civil, not criminal, cases. Further, Congress described the FSIA as defining “the circumstances in which foreign states are immune from suit,” not from criminal investigation or prosecution. 90 Stat. 2891. In stark contrast, the FSIA is silent as to criminal matters, even though at the time of the FSIA’s enactment in 1976, the Executive Branch occasionally attempted to subject foreign-government-owned entities to federal criminal investigation. If Halkbank were correct, immunity from criminal prosecution undoubtedly would have surfaced somewhere in the Act’s text. Moreover, the FSIA’s location in the U. S. Code—Title 28, which mostly concerns civil procedure, rather than Title 18, which addresses crimes and criminal procedure—likewise reinforces the interpretation that the FSIA does not apply to criminal proceedings. Finally, this Court’s decision in Samantar, in which the Court analyzed the FSIA’s “text, purpose, and history” and determined that the FSIA’s “comprehensive solution” for suits against foreign states did not extend to suits against individual officials, 560 U. S., at 323, 325, similarly supports the conclusion here that the FSIA’s provisions do not extend to the discrete context of criminal proceedings. Pp. 5–9.

(b) In response to all the evidence of the FSIA’s exclusively civil scope, Halkbank claims immunity from criminal prosecution based on one sentence in the FSIA, which provides that a “foreign state shall be immune from the jurisdiction of the courts of the United States and of the States except as provided in sections 1605 to 1607 of this chapter.” 28 U. S. C. §1604. Section 1604, however, must be considered in context. Section 1604 works in tandem with §1330(a): Section 1330(a) spells out a universe of civil cases against foreign states over which district courts have jurisdiction, and §1604 then clarifies how principles of immunity operate within that limited civil universe. Halkbank’s interpretation of §1604 is also difficult to square with its