Sep 07, 2011 · The case for torture warrants. By Alan Dershowitz. 16 Min Read. The opinions expressed are his own. One goal of terrorism directed against democracies is to provoke overreaction and repression. In ...
In a slightly different vein, Dershowitz has argued that because torture is already being used by US personnel under the radar and therefore with impunity, it would be better to legally regulate it...
The concept of a "torture warrant" is most closely associated with the work of: Alan Dershowitz According to the text, _______ is the ethical justification for all the counter-terrorism measures discussed in the text.
Mar 16, 2022 · Blood-Stained Woman, 25, Accused of Murdering Well-Known Lawyer in NYC Office The killing might have stemmed from the immigration lawyer's refusal to take on as a client a 25-year-old woman who ...
The goal of the torture warrant proposal is to reduce the use of torture to the smallest amount and degree possible, while creating public accountability for its rare use.Sep 8, 2011
Dershowitz retired from teaching at Harvard Law in 2013. He is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute. Throughout his tenure at Harvard, Dershowitz maintained his legal practice in both criminal and civil law.
(617) 495-4642.
Carolyn Cohenm. 1986Sue Barlachm. 1959–1975Alan Dershowitz/Spouse
Why do states shift from opposition to torture to its employment in the face of widespread abhorrence and claims that it generates unreliable information? The expected value of acting upon unreliable information depends on the state’s appraisal of the type of error it might be committing. States may value avoiding Type I errors, which result from acting upon incorrect intelligence, differently than avoiding Type II errors, which result from failing to act on an undetected threat. Interrogations yield a mix of truth and lies; operations employing this information will avoid making Type II errors but will also make Type I errors. A state’s preference over error type changes with circumstances (as we show, occurs in Turkey and the United States), leading states to adopt coercive interrogation techniques despite secular abhorrence of torture. Our results suggest anti-torture advocacy might be more effective targeting preferences over error types than reinforcing anti-torture moral imperatives.
“The book in your hands signals the birth of Post-Epistemicidal Curriculum Studies. As powerfully demonstrated here, the Internationalization of Curriculum Studies Task Force of the American Association for the Advancement of Curriculum Studies boldly grounds the field in a critical creolization. Contributors to this volume dialogue with texts and traditions otherwise unseen or erased by normative constructs and parochial attachments to a local academic milieu. Implicitly acknowledging critiques of an ‘American canon’ of curriculum studies as erasing parallel epistemologies and practices in a centuries-long tsunami of colonial dominance, these authors study and translate material from non-Western, nonwhite scholars; they interrogate their own positionalities, geo-economic status, and professional commitments, inside and outside of complex, hybrid identities and memberships in overlapping, as well as distinct, communities. The collective accomplishment establishes curriculum studies as an ethical stance upon the world—at once trans-national, post-cultural, and alter-global, while committed to recognition and countering dispossession.” —Peter Appelbaum, Director of Disciplinary and Transdisciplinary Programs, Arcadia University; President, The American Association for the Advancement of Curriculum Studies “At the eleventh annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Curriculum Studies (AAACS) in New Orleans in 2011, the Internationalization of Curriculum Studies Task Force made an important and radical move in the internationalization of curriculum studies. Following the epistemological work of Southern theorists such as Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Enrique Dussel, Walter Mignolo, Raewyn Connell, Fernando Coroníl, and Gayatri Spivak, João M. Paraskeva and the task force began a bold and ambitious project to remediate a Statesian- and Anglophone-dominated curriculum studies field. Radical in its conceptions and the new directions suggested for curriculum studies, Paraskeva and the task force have begun to reorganize the field in a way that recognizes decolonizing knowledges and traditions as fundamental in approaching the curriculum question: what knowledges are of most worth? Recognizing the colonial relation as the fundamental historical event shaping knowledge production, Paraskeva frames the task force’s initial efforts here as a necessary decolonizing move that reaches backwards historically to renew the field.” —James C. Jupp, Georgia Southern University
Legalizing torture in high evidence cases has offsetting effects on agency incentives to counter terrorism by means other than torture. It increases these incentives because other efforts may increase the probability of having high enough evidence to warrant the use of torture if other efforts fail. However, it also lowers these incentives because the agency might come to rely on torture to avert attacks. If the latter effect dominates, legalizing torture in high evidence cases can reduce security and increase agency incentives to torture even in low evidence cases, leading to a “slippery slope.”
Within the utilitarian camp, there are those who argue that torture, while immoral, should be legalized for use in the fight against terrorism, so that it can be better controlled and regulated. This article will provide new insights through its analysis of the CIA Inspector General's 2004 Special Review of Counterterrorism, Detention and Interrogation Activities, declassified in 2009. This offers important evidence that counters the key assumptions of contemporary torture apologists. Specifically, the Inspector General's findings reinforce the argument that torture is not effective, that efforts to legalize its use under controlled conditions are futile, and that, even where torture is permitted by higher authorities, recriminations against the perpetrators are still likely to ensue. Furthermore, torture tends not to be aimed at thwarting imminent threats. Its use by the CIA in the War on Terror is no exception. In any case it has yielded little evidence that could not have been obtained through legitimate means.
Firstly, it is argued that the problem of "dirty hands" can play neither within rule-utilitarianism nor within absolutism. Still, however, the problem of "dirty hands" represents an acute, seemingly irresolvable, conflict within morality, with the moral agent understood, following Nagel and contra Walzer, as necessarily holding mixed, absolutist-consequentialist moral intuitions, pulling in opposite directions. Secondly, a distinction is drawn between real situations of "dirty hands," and other conflictual scenarios, which are commonly, but unjustifiably placed under the metaphorical title of "dirty hands." Finally, it is suggested - utilizing Nagel’s own ideas, as developed in his later work, and Sen's notion of evaluator relativity - that the moral "blind alley" manifested in the problem of "dirty hands" may not be totally blind after all, at least from the situated agent's own internal point of view (as opposed to that of an external observer trying to put herself in the agent's position by way of moral simulation). Thus, contrary to Walzer's approach, it is possible for a person (politician) acting in a situation of "dirty hands," not to believe herself to be guilty, but still be a moral person.
The argument that torture could be permissible in exceptional cases, such as the fight against terrorism, has been increasingly present in the rhetoric of politicians. President Trump’s belief in the effectiveness of torture has renewed the debate about how far interrogators may go to extract information as part of counter-terrorism measures. Added to this his nomination of Ms Gina Haspel for the position of director of the Central Intelligence Agency, where Ms Haspel has been accused of being involved in the torture of terrorist suspects, and the debate over what constitutes torture and what is permissible in the fight against terrorism is reignited. This article firstly considers whether there has been any evolution with regards to the understanding of which acts constitute torture, and in particular whether severe pain and suffering remains a requirement for an act to constitute torture. Secondly, it enquires whether any limitation of the prohibition of torture is permissible in the fight against terrorism, in light of the universal condemnation of terrorism and the threat it poses to global peace and security.
The television series ‘24’ has been a television phenomenon which over seven series has spawned a mass following and innumerable spin-offs including webisodes, prequels, games, and action figures. More significantly it has been enormously influential in the construction of the relationship between rule of law and security issues, particularly in relation to terrorism. Jack Bauer’s actions, and specifically his use of torture in the common good, have been important influences in the development of the US debate. Nonetheless, to situate ‘24’ as a purely contemporary phenomenon – a child of 9/11 – is to miss the larger point. On the one hand ‘24’ frames law against questions of singularity which appeal to a longstanding tradition of vigilante justice evident in familiar archetypes of cowboys and superheroes. At the same time such a tradition reaches back to much older Christological models of justice and subjectivity which modernism has deflected but never defeated. In ‘24’ and elsewhere, popular culture does not merely keep these memories of law alive: it actively realizes and advances them, and needs to be understood not only as a depiction of law but as a law-making force in its own right. A pluralist theory of law ties contemporary technological manifestations of popular culture back to law’s enduring social and discursive roots as we see, for example, in EP Thompson’s Cultures in Common. One might even characterize popular culture as a defence of some sort of ‘moral legality’ against the ‘market legality’ of modernity. On the other hand, ‘24’ frames law against questions of urgency and emotion. While popular culture has for centuries reflected an older form of law and justice, its capacity to undermine the very pluralist and discursive openness which are its well-spring, demonstrates the dangers to which the rhetoric of urgency and the emotional power of medium and message are prone. In a world shorn of its faith in the traditional structures which sustained the moral economy and the moral legality, the appeal to simply trust in an inarticulable justice sustained by an emotional pitch which is in ‘24’ at every moment apparent, opens the prospect of legal terrorism.
The word 'torture' comes from the French torture, originating in the Late Latin tortura and ultimately deriving the past participle of torquere meaning 'to twist'. The word is also used loosely to describe more ordinary discomforts that would be accurately described as tedious rather than painful; for example, "making this spreadsheet was torture!"
The Inter-American Convention to Prevent and Punish Torture , which is in force since 28 February 1987, defines torture more expansively than the United Nations Convention Against Torture. Article 2 of the Inter-American Convention reads:
The Economist magazine proposed that one of the reasons torture endures is that torture does indeed work in some instances to extract information/confession if those who are being tortured are indeed guilty. Depending on the culture, torture has at times been carried on in silence (official silence), semi-silence (known but not spoken about), or openly acknowledged in public (to instill fear and obedience).
Intentional infliction of physical or mental suffering upon a person or an animal. For other uses, see Torture (disambiguation). A variety of real and fictitious torture instruments. Many, including the large Iron Maiden of Nuremberg, were never used for torture. Torture (from Latin tortus: to twist, to torment) is the act ...
Torture has been carried out or sanctioned by individuals, groups, and states throughout history from ancient times to modern day, and forms of torture can vary greatly in duration from only a few minutes to several days or longer.
The treaty was adopted at a diplomatic conference in Rome on 17 July 1998 and went into effect on 1 July 2002. The Rome Statute provides the simplest definition of torture regarding the prosecution of war criminals by the International Criminal Court. Paragraph 1 under Article 7 (e) of the Rome Statute provides that:
The position has been extended up to date. On 1 November 2016, Prof. Nils Melzer, took up the function of UN Special Rapporteur on Torture.
This article sets out the legal duty of the United States of America to provide victims of torture and cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment (CIDT) the right to full rehabilitation under international law, including those still detained at the facility at Guantánamo Bay. After an examination of some of the torture methods used on these detainees, while they were in the custody of the CIA and arguably afterwards, it goes on to indicate the current obstacles to rehabilitation, including on-going incarceration, lack of impunity, classification of medical documents and limited access to non-military staff. Limited options for possible psychological assistance towards the right to rehabilitation are considered.
Several aspects of torture are considered in the following chapter. The first section “Definitions of Torture” presents several definitions of torture. In the second section, “The History of Torture,” a brief history of torture in Europe illuminates the role torture has historically played in the legal system. In the third and fourth sections, “Moral and Legal Permissibility” and “The Ticking-Bomb Scenario ,” a survey of some of the recent arguments for and against torture is offered. The final section, “Torture and Interrogation,” discusses the evidence surrounding the (in)effectiveness of torture.
Dirty hands cases are often seen as a crucial challenge for political ethics. Michael Walzer’s analysis of dirty hands cases has been especially influential. On closer inspection, however, Walzer’s analysis contains some serious flaws. This article examines how and to what extent the political ethics of Paul Ricoeur can remedy the problems in Walzer’s approach. It is shown that Ricoeur’s approach can offer a better understanding of what is at stake in dilemmas in political action and that it can provide guidance for dealing with such issues. Ricoeur’s analysis, furthermore, provides the foundation for a more critical political ethics than Walzer can offer.
The debate about torture can be divided, following McMahan’s classification, into two levels: theoretical and practical . In the first, there is a discussion about the moral permissibility of torture in exceptional circumstances and the characteristics that make torture a practice, prima facie, immoral. In the second, the possible consequences of different models of legislation intending to address the situations that obtain in the real world (absolutism, institutionalism and legalism) are evaluated. In this second level, this paper aims to critically analyze the legislative proposals of Jeff McMahan and Alan Dershowitz. It also seeks to offer a preliminary exploration of the advantages of the legalistic model.
The ticking-bomb argument, where a terrorist is tortured in order to extract information of a primed bomb located in a civilian area, is often invoked as one of those extreme circumstances where tortur e becomes justified. As the War on Terrorism intensifies, the ticking-bomb argument has become the dominant line of reasoning used by both academics and policy advisers to justify a legalized, state-sponsored program of torture. This paper argues for the unconditional refutation of any attempt to justify torture, without exceptions. We argue against the consequentialist reasoning of the ticking-bomb argument not from a deontological position, but on consequentialist grounds. Empirical evidence suggests that the institutionalization of torture practices creates serious problems. Torture interrogation fails to fulfil its initial purpose as a low-cost life saver, while its long-term potential is the devastation of democratic institutions.