484
Opinion of Breyer, J.
separateness of a corporate entity but nevertheless deliberately conferring the "foreign state" status of the shareholder upon the corporation itself); H. R. Rep. No. 94-1487, p. 15 (1976) (same). See also Working Group of the American Bar Association, Reforming the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, 40 Colum. J. Transnat'l L. 489, 517-518 (2002) (herein-after ABA Working Group) (FSIA rejects the "separate-entity" rule that courts had often applied to deny immunity to state-owned corporations).
Statutory interpretation is not a game of blind man's bluff. Judges are free to consider statutory language in light of a statute's basic purposes. And here, as in Flink, supra, and K mart, supra, an examination of those purposes sheds considerable light. The statute itself makes clear that it seeks: (1) to provide a foreign-state defendant in a legal action the right to have its claim of a sovereign immunity bar decided by the "courts of the United States," i. e., the federal courts, 28 U. S. C. § 1604; see § 1441(d); and (2) to make certain that the merits of unbarred claims against foreign states, say, states engaging in commercial activities, see § 1605(a)(2), will be decided "in the same manner" as similar claims against "a private individual," § 1606; but (3) to guarantee a foreign state defending an unbarred claim certain protections, including a prohibition of punitive damages, the right to removal to federal court, a trial before a judge, and other procedural rights (related to service of process, venue, attachment, and execution of judgments). §§ 1330, 1391(f), 1441(d), 1606, 1608-1611. See Verlinden B. V. v. Central Bank of Nigeria, 461 U. S. 480, 497 (1983) ("Congress deliberately sought to channel cases against foreign sovereigns away from the state courts and into federal courts"); H. R. Rep. No. 94-1487, at 32 ("giv[ing] foreign states clear authority to remove to a Federal forum actions brought against them in the State courts" in light of "the potential sensitivity of actions against foreign states and the importance of developing a uniform body of law in this area"); id., at 13 ("Such
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