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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 January 2015
Government policies and practices can exert significant influence on ethical behavior in a society. Many governments still rely on a long-standing prerogative of sovereigns, the defense of sovereign immunity, to avoid public inquiry about acts that are clearly immoral. However, the basic theory and frequent practice of invoking sovereign immunity cannot be ethically justified. Moreover, such practices model conduct based on power rather than reason, fairness, or justice, and invite both nations and individuals to view politics and business as a power game to be played and won, rather than as a process of building communities that emphasize reciprocity and commitment to moral principles.
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4 Schein, E.H., Organizational Culture and Leadership, (San Francisco: Josey-Bass and Co., 1986), p. 8.Google Scholar
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12 Standard usage in international law uses the term “state” with reference to nations capable of international relations with other nations. The “sovereign,” while formerly indicating a particular “head” of state, now means simply “the government” of a particular state. Sovereign immunity is thus another way of referring to governmental immunity.
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16 28 U.S.C. §2671 et. seq,
17 Argentine Republic v. Amerada Hess, U.S. Supreme Court, 488 U.S. 428 (1989).
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20 United States v. Stanley, U.S. Supreme Court, 483 U.S. 669 (1986).
21 Feres v. United States, U.S. Supreme Court, 340 U.S. 135 (1950).
22 United States v. Stanley, pp. 694-95. Italics in original.
23 Id., p. 687. Italics in original.
24 Congress is clogged with bills for special relief. As of this writing, Congress was considering a bill to compensate Stanley some $625,000, but the Pentagon has objected to the amount. Of the 1,000 or so soliders in the Army's 1950's LSD experiments, only one has been compensated. Phillips, “Award in sight for LSD victim,” USA Today (July 11, 1991). p. 2A.
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44 Lauterpacht traced similar developments in France, Germany, and England, noting that they followed “the direction of putting the state and the individual on a footing of equality before the law.” Lauterpacht, op cit., p. 235. This direction, he noted, represented the reversal of “the rules of medieval common law,” where citizens-subjects had no rights against the crown, and a “curbing” of the “chronic dislike of sovereigns (however democratic) to pay for wrongs done.”
45 See Lobel, op. cit., pp. 1110-1113.
46 “The Nuremburg Legacy: An Unfulfilled Promise,” Southern California Law Review, vol. 63, (1990), p. 904.
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49 Etzioni, op. cit., at ix.
50 Id., p. 7.
51 Id., at x.
52 Id.
53 Id., op. cit., p. 9.
