Opinion ID: 185956
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Did the Congress clearly intend to legislate retroactively?

Text: 32 Because the commercial activity exception would, if applied to events before 1952, upset Japan's settled expectations, we must determine whether the Congress manifested a clear intent to overcome the presumption against retroactive legislation. We find no clear indication the Congress intended 28 U.S.C. § 1605(a)(2) to apply to events occurring prior to 1952. The appellants point out, as we observed obiter in Princz, that the decision of the Congress, concurrent with the passage of the FSIA, to delete from 28 U.S.C. § 1332 the provision for diversity jurisdiction over a suit brought by a United States citizen against a foreign government might suggest the FSIA was intended to have retroactive effect — [u]nless one is to infer that the Congress intentionally but silently denied a federal forum for all suits against a foreign sovereign arising under federal law that were filed after enactment of the FSIA but based upon pre-FSIA facts. 26 F.3d at 1170. This point remains valid as applied to events occurring between 1952 and 1976. The Congress's decision to amend 28 U.S.C. § 1332 cannot provide a basis, however, for altering sovereign immunity as it existed prior to 1952. The most that can be said is that in enacting the FSIA the Congress intended to incorporate the doctrine of restrictive immunity into federal law, not that the doctrine be applied to events that occurred before the United States first adopted it. 33 The appellants' last argument for retroactivity is based upon a sentence in the preamble of the FSIA: Claims of foreign states to immunity should henceforth be decided by courts of the United States and of the States in conformity with the principles set forth in this chapter. 28 U.S.C. § 1602. In Princz we observed that this statement suggests that the FSIA is to be applied to all cases decided after its enactment, i.e. regardless of when the plaintiff's cause of action may have accrued. 26 F.3d at 1170. The preambular sentence falls far short, however, of stating the clear intent of the Congress that the statute be applied retroactively to events occurring before 1952. We agree with the United States that the most probable meaning of the sentence is that the State Department would no longer consider petitions for sovereign immunity — which it had done routinely until 1952, when it issued the Tate Letter, and sometimes thereafter, see Verlinden, 461 U.S. at 487, 103 S.Ct. at 1968 — because henceforth the question of immunity would be addressed solely by the courts applying the new statute. 34 We conclude that the commercial activity exception of the FSIA, 28 U.S.C. § 1605(a)(2), does not apply retroactively to events that predate the Tate Letter. Therefore, we need not consider whether the acts alleged in this case constitute a commercial activity within the meaning of 28 U.S.C. § 1605(a)(2). 35