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Page Number: 11.0

8 

TURKIYE HALK BANKASI A. S. v. UNITED STATES 

Opinion of the Court 

answer  or  other  responsive  pleading  to  the  complaint,”
§1608(d), as well as for any judgment of default, §1608(e)—
that relate to civil cases alone.  So, too, the Act’s provision 
regarding  counterclaims  concerns  only  civil  proceedings. 
§1607.  Finally, the Act renders a non-immune foreign state 
“liable  in  the  same  manner  and  to  the  same  extent  as  a 
private individual,” except that a foreign state (but not an 
agency  or  instrumentality  thereof)  “shall  not  be  liable  for 
punitive  damages.” 
Each  of  those  terms 
characterizes civil, not criminal, litigation. 

§1606. 

Other  parts  of  the  statute  underscore  the  FSIA’s 
exclusively  civil  focus.  Congress  codified  its  finding  that
authorizing  federal  courts  to  determine  claims  of  foreign
sovereign  immunity  “would  protect  the  rights  of  both
foreign states and litigants in United States courts.”  §1602 
(emphasis added).  The statutory term “litigants” does not
ordinarily sweep in governments acting in a prosecutorial 
capacity.  See Black’s Law Dictionary 1119 (11th ed. 2019) 
(defining “litigant” as “A party to a lawsuit; the plaintiff or 
defendant  in  a  court  action”).  What  is  more,  Congress
described the FSIA as defining “the circumstances in which 
foreign  states  are  immune  from  suit,”  not  from  criminal 
investigation  or  prosecution.  90  Stat.  2891  (emphasis
added).

In  stark  contrast  to  those  many  provisions  concerning 
civil actions, the FSIA is silent as to criminal matters.  The 
Act  says  not  a  word  about  criminal  proceedings  against
foreign states or their instrumentalities.  If Halkbank were 
correct  that  the  FSIA  immunizes  foreign  states  and  their
instrumentalities  from  criminal  prosecution,  the  subject
undoubtedly  would  have  surfaced  somewhere  in  the  Act’s 
text.  Congress  typically  does  not  “hide  elephants  in
mouseholes.”  Whitman v. American Trucking Assns., Inc., 
531 U. S. 457, 468 (2001).

Context  reinforces  text.  Although  the  vast  majority  of
their 
foreign 

involving 

states 

litigation 

and