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Can Governments Be Sued, Or Not?

Posted on 20th May 2016

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I am a little confused by the contradiction between these news stories:

  • In this BBC report the Saudi Arabian government is issuing warnings of the dire consequences of opening up governments to compensation suits;
  • But in this BBC report Amanda Knox is planning to sue the Italian government for their mishandling of the prosecutions against her, and the resulting "abuse";
  • And in this report from "Our Children's Trust" 21 teenagers have been given leave to proceed with their lawsuit against the US Federal Government, for causing climate change and for their failure to protect them against environmental impact.

I had thought that the situation was as described in the first article: that civil compensation suits could not be filed against governments. For this reason, legal history is full of cases against individuals and corporations, rather than the governments that were really to blame. If this is indeed the legal situation, then the Saudis are right to warn of the consequences of changing the rules (so that the families of victims of 9/11 can sue the Saudi government for compensation). The US government has a long and horrific history of meddling in wars and politics in countries around the world, and setting a precedent allowing governments to be sued could open them up to compensation claims for actions in Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Japan, Grenada, Egypt (CIA funding of the Muslim Brotherhood), Africa (for tipping off the apartheid government about the location of Nelson Mandela, causing his incarceration for 27 years), South America (for DEA actions to combat drug production and smuggling), and even Germany (for the post-WWII partition of Germany), to name but a few.

The second and third stories, however, show that it is possible in the USA to sue a foreign government and also the domestic government. I think we could be seeing a whole programme of legal action, especially as a result of the new 9/11 law suit legislation described in the first story. It is about time that bad intelligence, and funding of revolutionaries/terrorists had consequences. Governments and their various agencies should never be above the law.