Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/19-351_o7jp.pdf
Page Number: 3.0

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

3 

Syllabus 

law”  to  incorporate  any  international  norm,  including  international
human rights law, rather than merely the international law of expro-
priation.  The text of the FSIA’s expropriation exception, however, sup-
ports Germany’s reading.  The exception places repeated emphasis on
property  and  property-related  rights,  while  injuries  and  acts  associ-
ated with violations of human rights law, such as genocide, are notably
lacking—a remarkable omission if the provision was intended to pro-
vide relief for atrocities such as the Holocaust.  A statutory phrase con-
cerning property rights most sensibly references the international law 
governing property rights, rather than the law of genocide.  The heirs’ 
position  would  arguably  force  courts  themselves  to  violate  interna-
tional law not only by ignoring the domestic takings rule, but also by
derogating international law’s preservation of sovereign immunity for
violations of human rights law.  Germany’s interpretation of the ex-
ception is also more consistent with the FSIA’s express goal of codify-
ing the restrictive theory of sovereign immunity, 28 U. S. C. §1602, un-
der which immunity extends to a sovereign’s public, but not private, 
acts.  It would destroy the Act’s distinction between private and public 
acts were the Court to subject all manner of sovereign public acts to 
judicial scrutiny under the FSIA by transforming the expropriation ex-
ception into an all-purpose jurisdictional hook for adjudicating human
rights violations.  Pp. 8–12.

(3) Other FSIA provisions confirm Germany’s position.  The heirs’ 
approach  would  circumvent  the  reticulated  boundaries  Congress 
placed  in  the  FSIA  with  regard  to  bringing  claims  asserting  human 
rights violations.  One FSIA exception, for example, provides jurisdic-
tion 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).  And the FSIA’s terrorism exception 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).  Such restrictions would be of little consequence if hu-
man rights abuses could be packaged as violations of property rights 
and thereby brought within the expropriation exception.  Pp. 12–13.

(b) The heirs’ counterarguments cannot overcome the text, context, 
and history of the expropriation exception.  They claim that the 2016 
Foreign  Cultural  Exchange  Jurisdictional  Immunity  Clarification 
Act—which amends the FSIA to explain that participation in specified
“art exhibition activities” does not qualify as “commercial activity” un-
der  the  expropriation  exception,    §1605(h)—demonstrates  that  Con-
gress anticipated that Nazi-era claims could be adjudicated under the 
exception.  Congress’s effort to preserve sovereign immunity in a nar-