Court Opinion

ID: 9449791
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 16:22:52.625394+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:59.100750
License: Public Domain

CLARK, Circuit Judge
(dissenting):
In Puente v. Spanish Nat. State, 2 Cir., 116 F.2d 43, 45, cert, denied 314 U.S. 627, 62 S.Ct. 57, 86 L.Ed. 504, a case where, as we said, “there is no vestige of apparent jurisdiction,” we stated this important limitation on the defense of sovereign immunity: “When a court appears to have all the elements of jurisdiction of an action, it is not improper to require of even a sovereign who would oust it of that jurisdiction that he furnish due proof to support his claim.”1 While our illustrative examples naturally concerned cases we had had, to wit, foreign vessels within the district court’s jurisdiction, we expressly declined to limit the rule to particular instances, and indeed in contemporary cases we recognized the controlling importance of State Department pronouncements as to immunity claims. See, e. g., Sullivan v. State of Sao Paulo, 2 Cir., 122 F.2d 355; United States ex rel. D’Esquiva v. Uhl, 2 Cir., 137 F.2d 903, 906-907; see also Republic of Mexico v. Hoffman, 324 U.S. 30, 38, 65 S.Ct. 530, 534, 89 L.Ed. 729: “We can only conclude that it is the national policy not to extend the immunity in the manner now suggested, and that it is the duty of the courts, in a matter so intimately associated with our foreign policy and which may profoundly affect it, not to enlarge an immunity to an extqpt which the government, although often asked, has not seen fit to recognize.”
But it is most impOTtant to note that in later auth0rities not mentioned below ar here> the law to which these cases, pointed hag been explicitly stated and the. defense of sovereign immunity definitely restricted in cases involving the commercjai activities of a foreign state.2 In the now well known and important “Tate letter” of May 19, 1952, on behalf of the Secretary of State to the Attorney General, by Professor Jack B. Tate, then Acting Legal Adviser to the Secretary, the Department expressly clarified its position and in a reasoned exposition citing precedents set forth its future policy “to follow the restrictive theory of sovereign immunity” — applicable to a sovereign engaged “in commercial activities”- — and to limit the claim of immunity accordingly, 26 Dept. State Bull. 984 (1952). This was followed in National City Bank of New York v. Republic of China, 348 U.S. 356, 361, 75 S.Ct. 423, 427, 99 L.Ed. 389, in saying that “ [r] ecently the State Department has pronounced broadly *119against recognizing sovereign immunity for the commercial operations of a foreign government,” with citation to the Tate letter. And since that time (1952) it appears to have been common practice to seek or await State Department advice before a grant of this and other forms of immunity is made. Among illustrative cases we may cite Bernstein v. N. V. Nederlandsehe-Amerikaansche Stoomvaart-Maatsehappij, 2 Cir., 210 F.2d 375, where we reversed a previous ruling when informed of a State Department release to the contrary; and Banco Nacional de Cuba v. Sabbatino, 2 Cir., 307 F.2d 845, 855-858, cert, granted 372 U.S. 905, 83 S.Ct. 717, 9 L.Ed.2d 715, containing a full discussion, with extensive citations, of the role of the State Department in civil litigation in the federal courts. See also Rich v. Naviera Vacuba, S. A., 4 Cir., 295 F.2d 24.
Here the district court, in granting immunity, without any advice whatever from the State Department, in a case involving a grain sale to, and an agreement fo arbitrate by, the Kingdom of Greece, ■thus accorded that Kingdom a special privilege, contrary to the principles stated above. Before taking such a course the district judge should have asked the respondent to advise him as to the State Department’s position with reference to its claim of immunity or should himself Rave directed an inquiry to the Secretary of State. There was particular reason to •do so here, as this concerned not the enforcement of a final decree, but merely •the preliminary step of requiring the respondent to appoint an arbitrator, as it had agreed in its contract to do. See •for such an order against a foreign corporation under similar circumstances, Farr & Co. v. Cia. Intercontinental De Navegacion De Cuba, S. A., 2 Cir., 243 F.2d 342. The circumstances of consent -to the arbitration of what appears clearly to be a commercial transaction suggest a good possibility that the Department which has the responsibility (as we do not) for control of our foreign relations ■will not support the defense of immunity here. As it stands, the district court has assumed to interfere most discriminatorily in delicate foreign relations not entrusted to its responsibility, and a majority of the court now supports the interference. Had this ever been the law and common practice, it is surely not so now. I would reverse and remand for ascertainment of the State Department’s position as to this immunity claim.

. The Puente case — unlike the Sullivan case — has never been cited in the Supreme Court and very rarely (almost never in recent years) in lower federal courts, undoubtedly because the later events recounted in the text showed it a less extensive precedent than as here cited.

. For discussion of this trend see, e. g., Timberg, Expropriation Measures and State Trading, 1961 Proc.Am.Soc.Int.L. 113, 118.