Opinion of the Court
v. Islamic Republic of Iran, 583 U. S. ___, ___ (2018) (slip op., at 4); Republic of Austria v. Altmann, 541 U. S. 677, 689 (2004).
In 1952, the State Department announced the “restrictive” theory of foreign sovereign immunity, under which immunity was typically afforded in cases involving a foreign state’s public acts, but not its strictly commercial acts. Rubin, 583 U. S., at ___–___ (slip op., at 4–5). In the ensuing years, the process by which the Executive Branch submitted statements regarding a foreign state’s immunity sometimes led to inconsistency, particularly in light of the case-by-case diplomatic pressure that the Executive Branch received from foreign nations. Verlinden, 461 U. S., at 487. And when foreign states did not ask the State Department to weigh in, courts were left to render immunity rulings on their own, generally by reference to prior State Department decisions. Opati v. Republic of Sudan, 590 U. S. ___, ___ (2020) (slip op., at 2); Verlinden, 461 U. S., at 487.
In 1976, Congress entered the fray and sought to standardize the judicial process with respect to immunity for foreign sovereign entities in civil cases. Congress passed and President Ford signed the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. The FSIA prescribed a “comprehensive set of legal standards governing claims of immunity in every civil action against a foreign state.” Id., at 488.
To that end, the FSIA codifies a baseline principle of immunity for foreign states and their instrumentalities. 28 U. S. C. §1604. The FSIA then sets out exceptions to that principle—including, for example, the exception for commercial activities. §§1605–1607.
The FSIA defines a “foreign state” to encompass instrumentalities of a foreign state—including entities that are directly and majority-owned by a foreign state. §§1603(a)–(b); Dole Food Co. v. Patrickson, 538 U. S. 468, 473–474 (2003). (In this case, the United States does not contest Halkbank’s status as an instrumentality of a
