360
Opinion of the Court
jurisdiction of foreign courts as to its sovereign or public acts (jure imperii), but not as to those that are private or commercial in character (jure gestionis). Verlinden B. V. v. Central Bank of Nigeria, 461 U. S., at 487; Alfred Dunhill of London, Inc. v. Republic of Cuba, 425 U. S. 682, 698 (1976) (plurality opinion); see 28 U. S. C. § 1602; see also Dunhill, supra, at 711 (Appendix 2 to the opinion of the Court) (Letter to the Attorney General from Jack B. Tate, Acting Legal Adviser, Dept. of State, May 19, 1952); Hill, A Policy Analysis of the American Law of Foreign State Immunity, 50 Ford. L. Rev. 155, 168 (1981). We explained in Weltover, supra, at 614 (quoting Dunhill, supra, at 704), that a state engages in commercial activity under the restrictive theory where it exercises " 'only those powers that can also be exercised by private citizens,' " as distinct from those " 'powers peculiar to sovereigns.' " Put differently, a foreign state engages in commercial activity for purposes of the restrictive theory only where it acts "in the manner of a private player within" the market. 504 U. S., at 614; see Restatement (Third) of the Foreign Relations Law of the United States § 451 (1987) ("Under international law, a state or state instrumentality is immune from the jurisdiction of the courts of another state, except with respect to claims arising out of activities of the kind that may be carried on by private persons").
We emphasized in Weltover that whether a state acts "in the manner of" a private party is a question of behavior, not motivation:
"[B]ecause the Act provides that the commercial character of an act is to be determined by reference to its 'nature' rather than its 'purpose,' the question is not whether the foreign government is acting with a profit motive or instead with the aim of fulfilling uniquely sovereign objectives. Rather, the issue is whether the particular actions that the foreign state performs (whatever
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