Re: [asa] Torture

Duet. 25:1-3, which prescribes flogging for certain offenders convicted in
court, does not fit the definition of "torture." The United Nations
Convention on Torture exempts "pain or suffering arising only from, inherent
in or incidental to lawful sanctions." Moreover, philosophical treatments
of torture exempt corporal punishment because

"torture is not — as is corporal punishment — limited by normative
definition to the guilty; and in general torture, but not corporal
punishment, has as its purpose the breaking of a person's will. Moreover,
unlike torture, corporal punishment will normally consist of a determinate
set of specific, pre-determined and publicly known acts administered during
a definite and limited time period, e.g. ten lashes of the cat-o-nine-tails
for theft."

See http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/torture/

It's of course true that in a fallen world we often need to make ethical
judgments that weigh conflicting values, such as lying to protect Jews who
are being hunted by Nazis. However, it seems that no situation is so
extreme as to justify torture, except, *perhaps*, the "ticking time bomb"
scenario in which a massively destructive device is set to explode and the
only way to obtain the shut-off code is through torture. Even in that
exceptionally rare circumstance, the empirical unreliability of information
garnered by torture suggests that torture is not really justifiable.

On Tue, Aug 5, 2008 at 8:11 PM, huiyiing@juno.com <huiyiing@juno.com> wrote:
> I'm not going to pronounce a judgment on this issue because of my lack of
> experience. However, I would like to point out that the 10 commandments
are
> in a hierarchy of importance. Sometimes, we have to SADLY abandon the
> fulfillment of a commandment in order to fulfill a higher one. One of you
> mentioned how Rahab had lied, but was commended in the Bible for saving
the
> Israelites. Another example would be Jael, the wife of Heber, who
probably
> pretended to be a prostitute, put Sisera to sleep, then drove a nail into
> his temple (Judges 4). She had broken the commandments of murder and
> bearing false witness, but in doing so, attained a higher one to the glory
> of God! Therefore, when there are many rights, we have to execute the
> highest right.
>
>
>
> Here's a peripheral point. A form of torture was practised in the Old
> Testament. It's found in Deuteronomy 25:1-3.
>
>
>
> j burg wrote:
> > I have you tied up in my jail cell. I am 99% sure you know where the
>> bomb is that will blow up St. Louis in the next hour. I see no
>> alternative but to get this information out of you by any means
>> possible. Do I still rule out torture?
>>
>> What would Jesus do? Billy Graham? Your kindly grandmother? Your
>> favored presidential candidate?
>>
>> What if the city were Mecca? Do the answers change?
>>
>> Burgy
>
>
>
> ____________________________________________________________
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-- 
David W. Opderbeck
Associate Professor of Law
Seton Hall University Law School
Gibbons Institute of Law, Science & Technology
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