Civil suits against Terrorist funders

[Xar]

I was just curious as to what people thought of this:

http://www.masnet.org/news.asp?id=1952

Because of my obvious bias, I'm in favor of the judges' findings. But I can see obvious arguments against it. We have a lot of lawmasters here, and I was curious about their opinion!

[Quotox]

I actually could go on the matter for a long period of tiime. I am writing my LLM theis on this topic.

The Boims decisions is not unspurising. It has a special circumstance. The Federal Anti-terrorism laws, 18 USC 2331 et sub, provide a statutory rememdy for Americans on this matter. It actually provides for treble damages against people who fund or carry out acts of terrorism. Treble damages is three times damages, so the jury rules on the damages and then multiplies by three. This type of damages are pretty rare in american law and sort of an affirmative statement by Congress that this is one of the more egregious areas of the law you can go astray in.

Furthermore, the standard for these cases is not simply Joe O'Mailly gives $500 to The Northern Irish Catholic League who turns around and funds the IRA's violence in the UK. Now Joe is on the hook for the IRA's action. There is a component of the lay that says you have to know that your money is going to such violent activities. So the people that actually are culpable in this circumstance are not innoncent and chartible folks.

Finally, the international community sucks when it comes to terrorism. I say sucks because its professionaly in appropriate to say what I actually think and you parents with young children who are learning to read might not want to explain to them what some of the words are I'm using. The United Nations has taken such a piece-meal approach to this issue. For the last 40 years, the response has been to address specific types of crimes, like hostage taking, hijiacking, and in 1999 Terrorist Financing. This Financing convention, signed and ratified by over 200 nations, makes this a common standard for nations to deal with terrorist financiers how they see fit.

Why I say they suck when they seem to be doing something is beccuase they refuse to address the very issue of terrorism itself. The UN, only now, is even considering language to define 'terrorism.' There has been such widespread look the other way and funnel money to your local insurgent, that it has premoted such violence.

So above all, my feeling is that if this is away to punish people who engage in violence against civilian populations, then Huzzah and I'll be in line soon with my plaintiffs to do my part.