Virtually all legal and legislative experts interviewed on NPR today have thought that this will not have any significant downstream affect given that there are already exceptions to sovereign immunity clauses, this will be yet another exception, and it's overwhelmingly likely to be rewritten come December after the election. Almost nobody, save for alarmists on internet forums, think that this is going to open the doors to the US (or other allies) being sued world wide in either legitimate or dubious lawsuits. That's why this passed easily with a voice vote in both chambers of Congress and the veto was overridden with virtual unanimity amongst both Republicans and Democrats. If the consequences were as dire as the posts in this thread and others in federal law enforcement/executive positions want to make it seem, then over 93% of Senate democrats would not have voted to overrride Pres. Obama's veto.
Beyond everything, this is going to be amended
after the election.
It's already on the docket for the lame duck session that comes up in December. Congress is going to come together and amend the bill before it becomes law, there's already been a bipartisan letter that a few dozen congressmen in both parties have signed off on saying that the bill will come up for review again after the election. The reason Tim Kaine and Bernie Sanders abstained from the vote is precisely this reason, given that Tim Kaine is likely to become Vice President and there's a likelihood that Bernie Sanders may see an executive appointment, they're the only two senators who have something to lose by voting with the president but against the rest of their party. The only senator that upheld the president's veto, Harry Reid, is retiring.
So, no, this is not opening the door to widespread civil judicial action against the United States on issues of Drone Strikes, Hiroshima, Slavery, the absorption of Texas, Hawaii becoming a state, Native Americans suing Portugal for Columbus, or Montezuma's Grand Children lawyering-up against Spain, or any number of nightmare or fantasy scenarios we can think of.
The
vote is important because it's the first time that Congress has over-ridden a veto under Obama, now in the closing months of his presidency, but the
affect of the vote will be measured and insignificant.