Court Opinion

ID: 9456880
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 20:04:55.274334+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:07.853309
License: Public Domain

HAYS, Circuit Judge
(dissenting):
By refusing to apply the exception to the act of state doctrine announced by this court in the third Bernstein case, Bernstein v. N.V. Nederlandsche-Ameri-kaansche Stoomvaart-Maatschappij, 210 F.2d 375 (2d Cir. 1954), the majority is engaging in precisely the kind of judgment which the act of state doctrine has removed from judicial determination.
The majority’s attempt to distinguish Bernstein shows a misapprehension of the basis upon which the Bernstein exception was formulated. Bernstein was a per curiam opinion in which this court set forth part of the text of a State Department letter. The court, making no independent evaluation of the letter itself, then stated that “ [i]n view of this supervening expression of Executive Policy, we amend our mandate in this case by striking out all restraints based on the inability of the court to pass on acts of officials in Germany during the period in question.” Id. at 376. Considerations such as the acts of the Nazi government, the fact that we were at war with the government in question, and the fact that that government no longer existed, all used by the majority to distinguish Bernstein, were set forth not by the court but by the State Department in its letter. Unless the majority wishes to overrule Bernstein, it must accept the Banco Nacional letter as an expression of Executive Policy and go no further. In Banco Nacional de Cuba v. Sabbatino, 376 U.S. 398, 420, 84 S.Ct. 923, 11 L.Ed.2d 804 (1964), the Court held that there had been no expression of Executive Policy.
More fundamental than a mere lack of conformity with Bernstein, however, is the fact that the majority, by applying the act of state doctrine after an independent evaluation of the merits of the State Department’s decision, is usurping the same executive prerogative which it is the function of that doctrine to preserve. The recognition of this conflict is the very reason for the Bernstein exception. The fundamental premise behind the act of state doctrine is that “[t]he conduct of the foreign relations of our government is committed by the Constitution to the executive and legislative — ‘the political’ — departments of the government, and the propriety of what may be done in the exercise of this political power is not subject to judicial inquiry or decision.” Oetjen v. Central Leather Co., 246 U.S. 297, 302, 38 S.Ct. 309, 311, 62 L.Ed. 726 (1918). It is not the function of the courts to choose between competing foreign policy considerations and conclude that Nazi Germany is “bad” and that Cuba is “good.” The attitude of the United States toward foreign powers must be left, as in Bernstein, to the decision of the other branches of government. As the Court said in Sabbatino, in discussing the related issue of a judicial determination of the right of a foreign country to sue in our courts, “ [t] his Court would hardly be competent to undertake assessments of varying degrees of friendliness or its absence * * Banco Nacional de Cuba v. Sabbatino, supra, 376 U.S. at 410, 84 S.Ct. at 931. The majority has undertaken just such *539an assessment and, in doing so, ignores both the exception to the act of state doctrine in Bernstein, and the fundamental purpose of the doctrine itself. I must dissent from what I consider to be a deviation from our judicial func-t¡on>