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Extracted Text (OCR)
Cite as: 586 U.S. (2019) 13
Opinion of the Court
view further bolsters our understanding of the IOIA’s
immunity provision.
D
The IFC argues that interpreting the IOJA’s immunity
provision to grant anything less than absolute immunity
would lead to a number of undesirable results.
The IFC first contends that affording international
organizations only restrictive immunity would defeat the
purpose of granting them immunity in the first place.
Allowing international organizations to be sued in one
member country’s courts would in effect allow that mem-
ber to second-guess the collective decisions of the others.
It would also expose international organizations to money
damages, which would in turn make it more difficult and
expensive for them to fulfill their missions. The IFC
argues that this problem is especially acute for interna-
tional development banks. Because those banks use the
tools of commerce to achieve their objectives, they may be
subject to suit under the FSIA’s commercial activity excep-
tion for most or all of their core activities, unlike foreign
sovereigns. According to the IFC, allowing such suits
would bring a flood of foreign-plaintiff litigation into U. S.
courts, raising many of the same foreign-relations con-
918 (1980) “By virtue of the FSIA, and unless otherwise specified in
their constitutive agreements, international organizations are now
subject to the jurisdiction of our courts in respect of their commercial
activities, while retaining immunity for their acts of a public charac-
ter.”); Letter from Arnold Kanter, Acting Secretary of State, to Presi-
dent George H. W. Bush (Sept. 12, 1992) in Digest of United States
Practice in International Law 1016-1017 (S. Cummins & D. Stewart
eds. 2005) (explaining that the Headquarters Agreement of the Organi-
zation of American States affords the OAS “full immunity from judicial
process, thus going beyond the usual United States practice of affording
restrictive immunity,” in exchange for assurances that OAS would
provide for “appropriate modes of settlement of those disputes for which
jurisdiction would exist against a foreign government under the” FSIA);
Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 24-29.
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