9/11 families confront Saudi Arabia in US court as JASTA pierces sovereign immunity shield protecting decades-long geopolitical alliance
Original framing: “New York court hears arguments in ongoing 9/11 families' lawsuit against Saudi Arabia” — BBC News - World
Lewis Hyde's Trickster Makes This World shows the trickster as 'boundary-crosser' who exposes artificial divisions. Here, JASTA is the trickster's tool: Congress used the state's own legal architecture (FSIA amendment) to breach the immunity shield the state built for its ally. Like Hermes stealing Apollo's cattle then inventing the lyre from their guts, the families weaponize the master's tools — US courts, US law, US discovery — to extract truth the state buried. Bakhtin's carnivalesque applies: the courtroom becomes a temporary zone where the 'king's immunity' is mocked by plaintiffs in 'Never Forget' t-shirts. Eshu (Yoruba), who carries messages between gods and humans at crossroads, mirrors the 28 pages — classified at the crossroads of oil and blood, now forced into open court. The absurd edge: the US argues Saudi immunity protects 'reciprocity' for US officials abroad — while US drone strikes kill civilians in Yemen with zero reciprocity.
This lawsuit is not a legal anomaly but a stress fracture in the architecture of impunity that has governed the US-Saudi alliance since 1945.
The 28 pages' 13-year classification, JASTA's veto override, and the US government's repeated amicus interventions reveal a bipartisan consensus: sovereign immunity protects allies from accountability for mass-casualty attacks on US soil. The trickster dimension — Congress using the state's own statutes to breach the shield it built for Saudi Arabia — exposes the contingency of this immunity. Indigenous jurisprudence (Haudenosaunee clan mothers' removal power) and Global South precedents (Lockerbie, Iran-US Claims Tribunal) prove alternative accountability frameworks exist. The families' litigation, the 'Jersey Girls'' excluded questions, and the parallel denial of redress to Iraqi and Afghan civilians together map a two-tier justice system calibrated to geopolitical utility. Systemic repair requires structural decoupling of victim redress from state liability findings — through mandatory declassification, reciprocal immunity treaties, and an international tribunal — so that 'never forget' becomes a juridical reality rather than a ritualized void.