Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/20-1566_l5gm.pdf
Page Number: 6

Cite as:  596 U. S. ____ (2022) 

3 

Opinion of the Court 

After  informal  efforts  to  recover  the  painting  failed,
Claude sued the Foundation in federal court in the Central 
District of California, near where he then lived.  His com-
plaint  asserted  various  property-law  claims,  all  alleging 
that he owned Rue Saint-Honoré and was entitled to its re-
turn.  And because the Foundation is an “instrumentality” 
of the Kingdom of Spain, the complaint invoked the FSIA 
to establish the court’s jurisdiction.  See §1603(b) (describ-
ing  an  instrumentality  as  a  legally  separate  but  state-
controlled  entity).    The  FSIA  governs  whether  a  foreign
state or instrumentality is amenable to suit in an American 
court.  It provides the sovereign actor with immunity unless 
the claim against it falls within a specified exception.  See 
§§1605–1607.    The  complaint  here  asserted  that  the  stat-
ute’s  expropriation  exception  applied.    That  exception  re-
moves  immunity  for  cases  involving  “rights  in  property
taken in violation of international law.”  §1605(a)(3).  At a 
prior stage of this litigation, the courts below held that the 
Nazi  confiscation  of  Rue  Saint-Honoré  brought  Claude’s 
suit against the Foundation within the expropriation excep-
tion.  See 461 F. Supp. 2d 1157, 1176–1177 (CD Cal. 2006), 
aff ’d, 616 F. 3d 1019, 1037 (CA9 2010) (en banc), cert. de-
nied, 564 U. S. 1037 (2011).  That determination, which is 
no  longer  at  issue,  meant  that  the  suit  could  go  forward.
(Claude, though, would not live to see anything further; he 
passed away in 2010, and his heirs became the plaintiffs.)1 
But go forward pursuant to what law?  The courts had to 
decide  whose  property  law  (Spain’s?  California’s?)  should
govern the suit, and thus determine the painting’s rightful 
owner.  Resolving  that  question  required  application  of  a
choice-of-law  rule—a  means  of  selecting  which  jurisdic-
tion’s law governs the determination of liability.  Yet there 

—————— 

1 Claude’s  children,  David  and  Ava  Cassirer,  along  with  the  Jewish
Federation  of San  Diego  County,  succeeded  to  his  claims.    Some  years 
later, Ava also died; her estate is now a substitute plaintiff.