Why is Torture 'Different' and How 'Different' is it?

2005

ABSTRACT: In this paper, I argue for the permissibility of torture in idealized cases by application of separation of cases: if torture is permissible given any of the dominant moral theories (and if one of those is correct), then torture is permissible simpliciter and I can discharge the tricky business of trying to adjudicate among conflicting moral views.

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000

2011

Abstract: This article explores a debate over the legal mechanisms by which interrogational torture could be sanctioned. Four separate proposals are considered, including: civil disobedience; torture warrants; self-defense; and necessity. Civil disobedience does not allow for legalized torture, but may allow for reduced punishments. Torture warrants contrast with self-defense and necessity in terms of offering ex ante, as opposed to ex post, authorization; arguments for and against either approach are considered.

2009

Professor Moore kindly suggested that we reprint the article again in this volume, but in view of its length relative to the other contributions we decided not to include it. 12 Moore, 'Patrolling the Boundaries', p. 44. 6 Once again, the Daschner case is instructive. The threat of torture failed to save the boy; the court was not satisfied that torture had truly been a last resort; and, significantly in view of the way the whole torture debate is framed by the twin towers, the case had nothing to do with terrorism. The threat of torture 'worked', but on a man who had no cause to serve, no comrades no protect, and thus little incentive to hold out or to feed his interrogators false information. 25 Although no case we know of provides incontrovertible evidence of the benefits of torture, we can discuss a real 'ticking bomb' case: In the late 1950s, Paul Teitgen, the prefect of Algiers, caught Fernand Yveton, a Communist placing a bomb in the gasworks. Teitgen knew Yveton had a second bomb, and if Yveton had planted and exploded it, it would set off gasometers, killing thousands. Teitgen could not persuade Yveton to tell him where the other bomb was. Nevertheless, said Teitgen, 'I refused to have him tortured. I trembled the whole afternoon. Finally the bomb did not go off. Thank God I was right.' 26 According to a former senior French intelligence officer (and unrepentant torturer), Yveton was in fact tortured despite Teitgen's orders. 27 Teitgen's reasons for refusing to torture (and later resigning his position) appear to have included the fact that he was himself a torture survivor 28-an illustration, perhaps, of La Torre's point that one cannot impose on others what one cannot accept oneself-and his fear, all too well founded as it turned out, that once permitted, torture would escalate: 'if you once get into this torture business, you're lost.' 29 In Henry Shue's view, for a ticking bomb case to justify torture, this likelihood of escalation would have to be absent, and in reality there are no such cases. 30 (Perhaps the Daschner case, being an isolated incident, comes closer than the Algerian situation.) Rejali suggests that the reason Teitgen 'trembled' was not simply fear of an explosion but the knowledge that if the explosion occurred he would be blamed for not using every possible means to prevent it. When officials do resort to torture as a response to terrorism, he suggests, they are not simply 'responding rationally to ineffectiveness' but 'purging the wounded community's furious emotions with human sacrifices.' 31

Criminal Justice Ethics

nb.vse.cz

In this paper I argue that necessity-based defenses of torture fail, and that the institutional practice of torture threatens not only the moral integrity of the public in whose name it is committed, but, ultimately, the liberty of that public as well.

Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics, 2016

How can just warriors prohibit torture absolutely while still allowing that killing can be just? The best arguments for torture’s wrongness and impermissibility seem to suggest that killing too is always wrong. If torture is wrong because it attacks imago Dei, why isn’t killing too – for killing seems at least as much an attack as torture? This question, which seems to force a choice between pacifism or countenancing “just torture” alongside just war killing, has scarcely been asked in Christian ethics. Among the only Christian ethicists to address this question, Nigel Biggar and Darrel Cole have leveraged these issues to argue for torture’s permissibility. Against such views, this essay shows why torture, but not killing, is always wrong, what distinguishes it from just war killing such that it but not killing should be categorically prohibited. I elucidate three features that distinguish torture from just war killing and establish it as always wrong: its intention and proximate end, its violating as opposed to destructive character, and its context of domination. I conclude by showing how these features are illustrated and exemplified by practices documented in the 2014 U.S. Senate report on torture.

Val. UL Rev., 2008