The Torture Debate in America

Greenberg, Karen J.
Karen J. Greenberg is the executive director of the Center on Law and Security at the New York University School of Law. She has a Ph.D. in American political history from Yale and teaches in the European Studies Department at NYU. She is a former Vice-President of the Soros Foundations/Open Society Institute and the founding director of the Program in International Education. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of numerous articles on the United States and Europe during World War II and an editor of the Archives of the Holocaust, Columbia University Series. She is the co-editor of the recently published The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib.

As a result of the work assembling the documents, memoranda, and reports that constitute the material in The Torture Papers the question of the rationale behind the Bush administration's decision to condone the use of coercive interrogation techniques in the interrogation of detainees suspected of terrorist connections was raised. The condoned use of torture in any society is questionable but its use by the United States, a liberal democracy that champions human rights and is a party to international conventions forbidding torture, has sparked an intense debate within America. The Torture Debate in America captures these arguments with essays from individuals in different discipines. This volume is divided into two sections with essays covering all sides of the argument from those who embrace absolute prohibition of torture to those who see it as a viable option in the war on terror and with documents complementing the essays.

This book provides essays on the debate over the US government's use of torture.

Introduction: the rule of law finds its Golem: judicial torture then and now; Part I. Democracy, Terror, and Torture: 1. Tortured liberalism; 2. How to interrogate terrorists; 3. Torture: thinking about the unthinkable; 4. The curious debate; 5. Is defiance of law proof of success: magical thinking in the war on terror; 6. Through a mirror, darkly; 7. Speaking law to power: lawyers and power; 8. Engine of state and the rule of law ; 9. Torture: an interreligious debate; Part II. On the Matter of Failed States, The Geneva Conventions and International Law: 10. Unwise counsel: the war on terrorism and the criminal mistreatment of detainees in U.S. custody; 11. Rethinking the Geneva Conventions; 12. The disappearing state; 13. War not crime; Part III. On Torture: 14. Panel discussion - torture: the road to Abu Ghraib and beyond; 15. Legal ethics and other perspectives; 16. Legal ethics: a debate; 17. Lawyers know sin: complicity in torture; 18. Renouncing torture; 19. Reconciling torture with democracy; Part IV. Afterword: 20. Litigating torture: the German Criminal Prosecution21. Ugly Americans; Part V. Relevant Documents: 22. Uncharted legal territory - RE: 1949 Geneva Conventions: the Presidents decisions under International Law; 23. The torture memo - RE: standards of conduct for interrogation; 24. Redefining torture Memo - RE: Legal standards Applicable; Part VI. Afterthought: To the American People: Report upon the Illegal practices of the United States Department of Justice