Daily Reads: On Torture

Professor Ruthann Robson, City University of New York (CUNY) School of Law

With the publication of the more than 500 page  "Executive Summary" of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency's Detention and Interrogation Program (searchable document here),  the subject of torture is dominating many public discussions.

A few items worth a look (or second look):

    In French, Justice Scalia's interview with Le Journal du matin de la RTS (videos and report) published today.  One need only be marginally fluent in French to understand the headline: "La torture pas anticonstitutionnelle", dit le doyen de la Cour suprême US.  (h/t Prof Darren Rosenblum).

    The French report will not surprise anyone familiar with Justice Scalia's discussion of torture from the 2008 "60 Minutes" interview discussed and excerpted here.

    The "ticking time bomb" discussion in Scalia's remarks is the subject of an interesting commentary by ConLawProf Rosa Brooks in Foreign Policy provocatively entitled "Tick, Tick, Bull, Shit."

    And while Justice Scalia contended that defining torture is going to be a "nice trick," LawProf David Luban's 2014 book Torture, Power, and Law offers very explicit definitions, even as it argues that these definitions can erode as torture becomes "normalized," seemingly giving credence to Scalia's point.

Woodcut circa 1540 via