“Is it really so easy to determine that smacking someone in the face to determine where he has hidden the bomb that is about to blow up Los Angeles is prohibited in the constitution”
Uh … yeah?
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia entered the torture debate Tuesday in an interview with the BBC making some pretty astonishing statements. Scalia jumped in after the U.S. government announced Monday it was seeking the death penalty in six cases in Guantanamo Bay, including the self-proclaimed architect of the Sept. 11 attacks.
To avoid repeating the words of academics and pundits, it should be simply noted that it should not rest in the hands of the Supreme Court to determine a threat level. Scalia makes the doomsday argument that the extremity of the threat should be equated with the extremity of the interrogation, and in a doomsday scenario, “extraordinary” tactics may be permissible.
The “ripening” of international law is reflected in the laws of nations. International law as agreed upon by civilized nations makes it way into the codified doctrines of international law. Despite the debate over torture, the U.S. military banned the use of waterboarding, which the CIA admitted to using against Khalid Sheik Mohammad, explicitly during the Vietnam War. The U.S. State Department defined a similar interrogation technique as torture in 2005. International law prohibits the its use and, if we go by the edict that, when U.S. law is considered, “international law is part of our law” then Scalias statements, by deduction, are dubious indeed.
