Syllabus
Held: Most naturally read, §1608(a)(3) requires a mailing to be sent directly to the foreign minister’s office in the foreign state. Pp. 5–17.
(a) A letter or package is “addressed” to an intended recipient when his or her name and address are placed on the outside. The noun “address” means “a residence or place of business.” Webster’s Third New International Dictionary 25. A foreign nation’s embassy in the United States is neither the residence nor the usual place of business of that nation’s foreign minister. Similarly, to “dispatch” a letter to an addressee connotes sending it directly. It is also significant that service under §1608(a)(3) requires a signed returned receipt to ensure delivery to the addressee. Pp. 5–9.
(b) Several related provisions in §1608 support this reading. Section 1608(b)(3)(B) contains similar “addressed and dispatched” language, but also says that service by its method is permissible “if reasonably calculated to give actual notice.” Respondents’ suggestion that §1608(a)(3) embodies a similar standard runs up against well-settled principles of statutory interpretation. See Department of Homeland Security v. MacLean, 574 U. S. ___, ___, and Mackey v. Lanier Collection Agency & Service, Inc., 486 U. S. 825, 837. Section 1608(b)(2) expressly allows service on an agent, specifies the particular individuals who are permitted to be served as agents of the recipient, and makes clear that service on the agent may occur in the United States. Congress could have included similar terms in §1608(a)(3) had it intended the provision to operate in this manner. Section 1608(c) deems service to have occurred under all methods only when there is a strong basis for concluding that the service packet will very shortly thereafter come into the hands of a foreign official who will know what needs to be done. Under §1608(a)(3), that occurs when the person who receives it from the carrier signs for it. Interpreting §1608(a)(3) to require that a service packet be sent to a foreign minister’s own office rather than to a mailroom employee in a foreign embassy better harmonizes the rules for determining when service occurs. Pp. 9–13.
(c) This reading of §1608(a)(3) avoids potential tension with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. If mailing a service packet to a foreign state’s embassy in the United States were sufficient, then it would appear to be easier to serve the foreign state than to serve a person in that foreign state under Rule 4. The natural reading of §1608(a)(3) also avoids the potential international implications arising from the State Department’s position that the Convention’s principle of inviolability precludes serving a foreign state by mailing process to the foreign state’s embassy in the United States. Pp. 13–15.
