Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-1450_5468.pdf
Page Number: 14

Cite as:  598 U. S. ____ (2023) 

11 

Opinion of the Court 

sequentially (per Congress’s design), the natural inference 
is  that  §1604  operates  exclusively  in  civil  cases.  Section 
1330(a) spells out a universe of civil (and only 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. 

We  thus  decline  to  read  §1604’s  grant  of  immunity  to
apply in criminal proceedings—a category of cases beyond
the civil actions contemplated in §1330(a), the jurisdictional
grant  to  which  §1604  is  substantively  and  sequentially 
linked.  Before making that leap, we would expect to find 
some  express 
indication  regarding  §1604’s
purportedly broader-than-civil scope.  But none exists. 

textual 

Moreover, Halkbank’s interpretation of §1604 is difficult 
to  square  with  its  interpretation  of  §1605,  an  FSIA 
provision  delineating  exceptions  to  the  immunity  granted 
in §1604.  Halkbank reads §1604 to confer immunity in both
civil and criminal cases.  But Halkbank then turns around 
and insists that the exceptions to that immunity specified 
in §1605—exceptions which, per the statute, apply “in any 
case”—attach  exclusively  in  civil  matters.    Brief  for 
Petitioner 43. 

In other words, Halkbank sees §1330 as operating only in
civil cases, §1604 in both civil and criminal cases, and §1605 
only  in  civil  cases.  In  Halkbank’s  view,  the  FSIA’s  scope
awkwardly flip-flops from civil to civil-and-criminal back to 
civil again in sequential provisions.  Congress did not write
such  a  mangled  statute.    The  better  and  more  natural 
reading is that §§1330, 1604, and 1605 operate in tandem
within a single universe of civil matters.

The  FSIA’s  remaining  provisions  described  above—
namely, those detailing elaborate procedures and remedies 
applicable exclusively in civil cases—strongly buttress the 
conclusion  that  §1604  “lays  down  a  baseline  principle  of 
foreign  sovereign  immunity  from  civil  actions,”  and  from 
civil actions alone.  Cassirer, 596 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 5)