As mentioned in an update to my previous post, the government's restriction of which countries could be sued under its victims of terrorism bill will help prevent it from being a really bad law. But it might also help make it a really useless one - or at least bring to light its inherent uselessness.
The point of this kind of law is as much to shame terror-supporting countries as to actually draw funds from them. As Peter Van Loan has already acknowledged, success in seizing assets would probably be pretty limited. And as interviewers keep pointing out to him, the main result of the case against Libya in U.S. courts that he's so fond of citing was a shift in policy, not a giant handover of cash.
At the same time, Foreign Affairs is going to be extremely reluctant to place states with which we have any semblance of decent relations on the list of states that can be sued in our courts. Countries like Saudi Arabia - with whom this could actually have some impact - are highly unlikely to come anywhere near this list. Only the very worst of the worst - Iran, or North Korea, or (maybe) Sudan - can expect to wind up on it.
If there's a point in shaming those countries, it's lost on me. They've been shamed so many times in the court of public opinion that they're basically unshameable. And to the extent that this actually is about compensation, it's highly unlikely that they'll have any real assets here to seize.
If it's been written properly - and as I said before, there are signs the Conservatives put in a decent effort on that front - the new law will be fairly harmless. But at least insofar as targeting states, as opposed to terrorist groups themselves, it also won't achieve much.
Adam Radwanski