In Quest of a “Common Conscience”: Reflections on the Current Debate About Torture

The issues provoked by the topic of torture are the subject of ongoing debate, not least because new disclosures, sometimes with accompanying leaked government documents, seem to be published almost every day. The year 2004 almost literally ended with the December 30, 2004, publication by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) of a brand new memorandum on the subject, designed to supplant the now notorious August 1, 2002, mem-orandum to White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales. The New Year began, not altogether coincidentally, with the consideration by the Senate Judiciary Committee of President Bush’s nomination of Gonzales to succeed John Ashcroft as the Attorney General of the United States. Not surprisingly, the issue of torture dominated the testimony.

“Just for Fun”: Understanding Torture and Understanding Abu Ghraib

My contribution to this symposium seeks to accomplish two things. First, I want to engage in a dialogue with Professors Levinson and Kreimer about the problems of defining torture and the law’s response to torture. My contentions are that, contrary to Professor Levinson’s suggestion, we should not seek to limit the category “torture,” and that, contrary to Professor Kreimer’s argument, law in fact fails to regulate torture. More precisely, I argue that law provides less of a constraint on torture, properly defined, than most people probably assume. Second, I want to use that dialogue as the launching point for a more open-ended exploration of torture and the more general problem of state violence. To that end, the last section of this essay considers with broad strokes some of the possible reasons for law’s failure to regulate torture adequately.

Hypothetical Torture in the “War on Terrorism”

Discussions about torture often start with this hypothetical: Imagine that there is a terrorist in the middle of Manhattan who has planted a nuclear bomb set to go off within hours. You capture him and are faced with a moral dilemma. Do you torture him to get the information that will allow you to defuse the bomb, thereby saving the lives of millions of people? Or do you stand on principle and sacrifice multitudes?