Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/19-351_o7jp.pdf
Page Number: 11.0

Cite as:  592 U. S. ____ (2021) 

7 

Opinion of the Court 

not just domestic takings.  In the 1950s and 1960s, a grow-
ing  chorus  of  newly  independent  states,  particularly  in
Latin America, resisted any foreign restraint on their abil-
ity to nationalize property.  See Young, The Story of Banco
Nacional de Cuba v. Sabbatino, in Federal Courts Stories 
422–423  (V.  Jackson  &  J.  Resnik  eds.  2010).    Put  differ-
ently, states and scholars disagreed over whether interna-
tional law provided a remedy for a sovereign’s interference 
with  anyone’s  property  rights,  not  whether  domestic  tak-
ings were outside the purview of international law.  That 
principle was beyond debate.

We confronted this dispute over the existence of interna-
tional  law  constraints  on  sovereign  takings  in  Sabbatino, 
where we were asked to decide claims arising out of Cuba’s 
nationalization  of  American  sugar  interests  in  1960.    376 
U. S., at 403.  This Court observed that there were “few if 
any  issues  in  international  law  today  on  which  opinion
seems to be so divided as the limitations on a state’s power 
to expropriate the property of aliens.”  Id., at 428 (emphasis 
added).  Hesitant to delve into this controversy, we instead
invoked  the  act  of  state  doctrine,  which  prevents  United
States  courts  from  determining  the  validity  of  the  public 
acts of a foreign sovereign.  Id., at 436. 

Congress did not applaud the Court’s reticence.  Within 
months  of  Sabbatino,  it  passed  the  Second  Hickenlooper 
Amendment  to  the  Foreign  Assistance  Act  of  1964.    The 
Amendment prohibits United States courts from applying 
the act of state doctrine where a “right[ ] to property is as-
serted” based upon a “taking . . . by an act of that state in
violation of the principles of international law.”  22 U. S. C. 
§2370(e)(2).
  Courts  and  commentators  understood  the 
Amendment to permit adjudication of claims the Sabbatino 
decision had avoided—claims against foreign nations for ex-
propriation  of  American-owned  property.    But  nothing  in 
the Amendment purported to alter any rule of international 
law, including the domestic takings rule.  See F. Palicio y