Quote:
Originally posted by bilmore
But, recover from whom? SH? I hear he's broke. The Iraqi people? They've got their own butcher's bill to submit. A central concept of tort law (well, in the olden days) was that you can only recover from a tortfeasor. If these guys should prevail, why should any government go along with the odious debt concept and cancel Iraq's debts incurred for the aggrandizement of SH?
We are against torture. We deposed SH partly on that basis. In other words, we got the "social justice" that the plaintiffs claimed to be seeking already. Now, you want the co-victims to pay for our guys' verdicts? I can't reconcile a discussion of rights with that approach. If Joe runs me down with his car, yeah, I should have a "right" to compensation, but not from Sally, who Joe ran over last week. The "right" doesn't trump the "just".
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It depends on whether you view a nation as more akin to a car or to a corporation -- or, more accurately, more like property or entities. If Joe hits you with his car and then sells his car to Sally, you don't sue Sally. If Joe's corporation steals from you, and he sells his shares to Sally (or she gets them in a hostile takeover), you sue the corporation even though Joe will not suffer.
Generally, nations are treated as entities. Hence the continuation of debts. The "odious debt" exception is interesting, but hasn't prevented creditors from asking any number of African countries to pay debts incurred by tyrants, for example. If we are to introduce an odious debt concept, it needs to be one that can apply to situations even where the change in regime is not brought about by the US.
