Exxon Mobil Corp. v. Corporación Cimex, S. A. (Cuba) · ¶77

This Court’s precedents further support reading the Helms-Burton Act to displace the FSIA’s immunity regime. In Republic of Iraq v. Beaty, the relevant statute afforded the President the power to “make inapplicable with respect to Iraq . . . any other provision of law that applies to countries that have supported terrorism.” 556 U. S. 848, 856 (2009) (quotation marks omitted). The statute in Beaty did not speak explicitly to sovereign immunity, to suits against foreign sovereigns, or to the FSIA. This Court nonetheless concluded that the “any other provision of law” residual clause authorized the President to suspend the FSIA’s exception for state sponsors of terrorism, thereby reinstating Iraq’s foreign sovereign immunity. See id., at 866. The Helms-Burton Act establishes a similar grant of on-off authority over foreign sovereign immunity to the President.

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