Cite as: 507 U. S. 349 (1993)
Opinion of the Court
the motive behind them) are the type of actions by which a private party engages in 'trade and traffic or commerce.' " Weltover, supra, at 614 (citations omitted) (emphasis in original).
We did not ignore the difficulty of distinguishing " 'purpose' (i. e., the reason why the foreign state engages in the activity) from 'nature' (i. e., the outward form of the conduct that the foreign state performs or agrees to perform)," but recognized that the Act "unmistakably commands" us to observe the distinction. 504 U. S., at 617 (emphasis in original). Because Argentina had merely dealt in the bond market in the manner of a private player, we held, its refinancing of the bonds qualified as a commercial activity for purposes of the Act despite the apparent governmental motivation. Ibid.
Unlike Argentina's activities that we considered in Weltover, the intentional conduct alleged here (the Saudi Government's wrongful arrest, imprisonment, and torture of Nelson) could not qualify as commercial under the restrictive theory. The conduct boils down to abuse of the power of its police by the Saudi Government, and however monstrous such abuse undoubtedly may be, a foreign state's exercise of the power of its police has long been understood for purposes of the restrictive theory as peculiarly sovereign in nature. See Arango v. Guzman Travel Advisors Corp., 621 F. 2d 1371, 1379 (CA5 1980); Victory Transport Inc. v. Comisaria General de Abastecimientos y Transportes, 336 F. 2d 354, 360 (CA2 1964) (restrictive theory does extend immunity to a foreign state's "internal administrative acts"), cert. denied, 381 U. S. 934 (1965); Herbage v. Meese, 747 F. Supp. 60, 67 (DC 1990), affirmance order, 292 U. S. App. D. C. 84, 946 F. 2d 1564 (1991); K. Randall, Federal Courts and the International Human Rights Paradigm 93 (1990) (the Act's commercial-activity exception is irrelevant to cases alleging
361
Page: Index Previous 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007