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12 

FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY v. PHILIPP 

Opinion of the Court 

part of a defense of America’s free enterprise system.  Sab-
batino, 376 U. S., at 430. 

Given that the FSIA “largely codifies” the restrictive the-
ory, however, we take seriously the Act’s general effort to 
preserve a dichotomy between private and public acts.  Nel-
son, 507 U. S., at 359 (internal quotation marks omitted).
It would destroy that distinction were we to subject all man-
ner of sovereign public acts  to judicial scrutiny under the 
FSIA by transforming the expropriation exception into an 
all-purpose  jurisdictional  hook  for  adjudicating  human
rights violations.  See Helmerich, 581 U. S., at ___ (slip op., 
at 9) (rejecting the suggestion that Congress intended the 
expropriation exception to operate as a “radical departure” 
from the “basic principles” of the restrictive theory). 

C 

Other provisions of the FSIA confirm Germany’s position. 
The heirs’ approach, for example, would circumvent the re-
ticulated boundaries Congress placed in the FSIA with re-
gard to human rights violations.  Where Congress did tar-
get injuries associated with such acts, including torture or
death, it did so explicitly and with precision.  The noncom-
mercial tort exception provides jurisdiction over claims “in
which money damages are sought against a foreign state for 
personal injury or death, or damage to or loss of property,” 
but  only  where  the  relevant  conduct  “occurr[ed]  in  the 
United  States.”  §1605(a)(5).    Similarly,  the  terrorism  ex-
ception eliminates sovereign immunity for state sponsors of 
terrorism but only for certain human rights claims, brought
by certain victims, against certain defendants.  §§1605A(a),
(h).

These  restrictions  would  be  of  little  consequence  if  hu-
man rights abuses could be packaged as violations of prop-
erty  rights  and  thereby  brought  within  the  expropriation 
exception to sovereign immunity.  And there is no reason to 
suppose Congress thought acts of genocide or other human