Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-1450_5468.pdf
Page Number: 15

12 

TURKIYE HALK BANKASI A. S. v. UNITED STATES 

Opinion of the Court 

(emphasis  added).    Considering  the  FSIA  “as  a  whole,”
there is “nothing to suggest we should read” §1604 to apply
to criminal proceedings.  Samantar, 560 U. S., at 319. 

In  sum,  Halkbank’s  narrow  focus  on  §1604  misses  the 
forest for the trees (and a single tree at that).  Halkbank’s 
§1604 argument reduces to the implausible contention that 
Congress enacted a statute focused entirely on civil actions 
and then in one provision that does not mention criminal
proceedings somehow stripped the Executive Branch of all 
power  to  bring  domestic  criminal  prosecutions  against 
instrumentalities of foreign states.  On Halkbank’s view, a 
purely  commercial  business  that  is  directly  and  majority-
owned by a foreign state could engage in criminal conduct 
affecting  U. S.  citizens  and  threatening  U. S.  national 
security  while  facing  no  criminal  accountability  at  all  in 
U. S. courts.  Nothing in the FSIA supports that result. 

B 
Halkbank  advances  three  additional  reasons  why  this 
Court should read the FSIA to immunize foreign states and 
their instrumentalities from criminal proceedings.  None is 
persuasive. 

First, Halkbank emphasizes this Court’s statement in a 
1989  case  that  the  FSIA  is  the  “sole  basis  for  obtaining 
jurisdiction over a foreign state in federal court.”  Amerada 
Hess,  488  U. S.,  at  439.    But  Amerada  Hess  was  not  a 
criminal case.  Rather, it was a civil case brought under the
Alien  Tort  Statute  and  under  the  federal  courts’  general
admiralty and maritime jurisdiction.  Id., at 432 (citing 28 
U. S. C.  §§1333,  1350).    This  Court  has  often  admonished 
that “general language in judicial opinions” should be read
“as  referring  in  context  to  circumstances  similar  to  the 
circumstances  then  before  the  Court  and  not  referring  to 
quite different circumstances that the Court was not then
considering.”  Illinois v. Lidster, 540 U. S. 419, 424 (2004). 
Amerada Hess made clear that the FSIA displaces general