Obama: ‘If we let Americans sue Saudis for 9/11, foreigners will begin suing US...

I find it very hard to believe that there was no possibility to ever sue a sovereign nation in the US prior to this law. The right to sue a sovereign state is usually more limited than a private person, but they typically do not have total carte blanche immunity. The idea of the law was either to clarify the limits of state immunity or to further limit it, depending on your point of view.In most European jurisdictions sovereign states are expressly not immune from lawsuits arising due to acts or omissions which cause death or injury, or damage to property. However, there's usually a caveat that the culpable act, and not just the injury or death, has to have occurred on the territory of the state in which the lawsuit is taking place; so this wouldn't help sue the Saudi government for something they did overseas which led to injury and death in the US (assuming US legislation is at all similar).

What I know of US law is gleaned from TV, but it is clearly not the case that international law prohibits suing a sovereign nation, since it is permitted everywhere in Europe, as I pointed out in the last post, and it happens. The European Convention on State Immunity, the draft UN convention on the same and the UK State Immunity Act all contain a very similar list of exceptions to State Immunity - amongst which is injury or death to persons or property damage.A quick glance at the US Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act reveals that it also contains an almost identical list of exceptions. Foreign states are not immune from lawsuits in the US when:

quote:

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money damages are sought against a foreign state for personal injury or death, or damage to or loss of property, occurring in the United States and caused by the tortious act or omission of that foreign state or of any official or employee of that foreign state while acting within the scope of his office or employment

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Note that the US law, unlike the European convention, does not require that the actionable act was committed on US soil, so it seems clear that US law already permitted the Saudi government to be sued if they were, indeed, liable for 9/11. That question has been addressed following a series of lawsuits in Italy and Greece against the German state for activities committed during World War II. The International Court of Justice ruling on the case decided that actions committed by an armed force during wartime are clearly a separate case, or warfare would not be possible. I'll leave it to you to decide if that would be a good thing or not.Edited by caffeine, : No reason given.