Cite as: 539 U. S. 396 (2003)
Ginsburg, J., dissenting
ity on this point appears to have been the studied aim of the American negotiating team. See Eizenstat, Imperfect Justice, at 272-273 (describing the "double negative" that satisfied German negotiators and preserved the flexibility sought by Justice Department litigators).
If it is uncertain whether insurance litigation may continue given the executive agreements on which the Court relies, it should be abundantly clear that those agreements leave disclosure laws like the HVIRA untouched. The contrast with the Litvinov Assignment at issue in Belmont and Pink is marked. That agreement spoke directly to claim assignment in no uncertain terms; Belmont and Pink confirmed that state law could not invalidate the very assignments accomplished by the agreement. See supra, at 436-437. Here, the Court invalidates a state disclosure law on grounds of conflict with foreign policy "embod[ied]" in certain executive agreements, ante, at 417, although those agreements do not refer to state disclosure laws specifically, or even to information disclosure generally.5 It therefore is surely an exaggeration to assert that the "HVIRA threatens to frustrate the operation of the particular mechanism the President has chosen" to resolve Holocaust-era claims. Ante, at 424. If that were so, one might expect to find some reference to laws like the HVIRA in the later-in-time executive agreements. There is none.
To fill the agreements' silences, the Court points to statements by individual members of the Executive Branch. See ante, at 411 (letters from Deputy Secretary of the Treas-5 The Court apparently finds in the executive agreements' "express endorsement of ICHEIC's voluntary mechanism" a federal purpose to preempt any information disclosure mechanism not controlled by ICHEIC itself. Ante, at 423, n. 13. But nothing in the executive agreements suggests that the Federal Government supports the resolution of Holocaust-era insurance claims only to the extent they are based upon information disclosed by ICHEIC. The executive agreements do not, for example, prohibit recourse to ICHEIC to resolve claims based upon information disclosed through laws like the HVIRA.
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