Exxon Mobil Corp. v. Corporación Cimex, S. A. (Cuba) · ¶93
The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976 (FSIA) provides that foreign states and their instrumentalities “shall be immune from the jurisdiction” of the federal courts unless an FSIA exception is met. 28 U. S. C. §1604. The FSIA is a comprehensive law, applying no matter the substantive law the plaintiff ’s claim invokes. The question here is whether the defendants, Cuban-owned companies, are immune from the jurisdiction of the federal courts. The answer should be just what the FSIA says: It depends on whether an FSIA exception is met. The Court instead concludes that the answer is no—not because of anything in the FSIA, but on the ground that a different law, the Helms- Burton Act, abrogates (in nonlegal speak, eliminates) the immunity that the FSIA may otherwise grant. The problem for the majority is that the bar for finding congressional abrogation is high, and the Helms-Burton…Read in context ›
slip opinion
Source edition
Passage preview. Read in context for the complete text, notes and references.