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Tortuous Final Essay Tianran Cui

I think torture should under no circumstances be justified as a legal practice, even though we all admit that there are acquiesced or even agency-leaded tortures happening in the grey area of judical system.

The focus of the argument, as Dershowitz had claimed: “torture should be controlled by defining its usage legally”, is ideal and irresponsible, because the primary concern of laws is to safeguard the rule of the ruling class and to protect the interests of the citizens. Because of that, revising existing laws should be taken very carefully. The righteousness of the revision is not enough; the consequences and influence the revision would cause, in other words, what underlying message this revision is delivering and what it encourages to be public, are equally essential to be considered when a revision is raised up.

In the “conversation” between Dershowitz and Scarry, Scarry criticized Dershowitz in a very practical perspective, while Dershowitz refused to step out of his theoretical world (It wasn’t really a conversation because they are not talking about the same thing). It’s never appropriate to only theorize things that are practical by nature. Starting with the Ticking Time Bomb scenario, Dershowitz used this case to prove the necessity of using tortures to protect the interests of the general public under extreme cases. However, there is no relation between torturing the suspects and stopping the bomb. Under such a situation, the primary focus is to plan for the worst and to minimize the damage if the bomb had exploded. And according to Soufan and the use of waterboarding in the investigation of 911, torturing the suspects didn’t make the suspects giving more informative and helpful messages. I have no information to conclude whether torturing is an effective way of making people tell the truth when they are not cooperative. For academic purpose, let’s assume torture the suspect will stop the bomb in the Ticking TIme Bomb scenario. Then of course the use of torturing is justified and the police(hopefully there were police) should do it immediately. However, does the use of torture in such rare and extreme case, where it does reflect the will and protect the interest of the general public, need to be written down specifically so that the current laws have to be revised? I will discuss and compare the possible pros and cons of issuing torture warrants, and draw a conclusion accordingly.

I admit the righteousness behind the thought of regulating the use of torture to prevent the abuse. But besides its righteousness I see no other practical benefits that it can bring. Assuming the congress had made regulations that defines when the use of torture is legal. But we have to face the problems of who is responsible to decide the situation is the described legal use scenario, who is allowed carry out the torturing, and to what extent torturing can be used, and how should the use of torture to be reported to the public. Those four questions decide whether the use of torture will always be righteous and legal, and all of them requests strict execution

and close monitoring. Since the time it costs of making sure torture is not abused is so high, torturing will either not be chosen (if all conditions need to be strictly checked off, it’s comparatively inefficient), or be abused due to the lack of monitor and restrains. And abuse is a consequence that we cannot take.

Imagine the world where torture is recognized as a commonly accepted legal practice. The abuse of torture will only be much more than right now where torture is commonly considered illegal. In both cases, those who are in power and are capable of using torture without being punished will always find their way to abuse torture. When torturing is illegal, despite whether the use of torturing is rightteous or not, because using torture is illegal and culpable, those people will minimize the use of torture and keep the torturing secret. On the contrary, if the usage of torture is legally justified(conditions are not that important, as long as there are legal ways), it greatly lowers the cost and the risk of abusing torture. When the cost and risk is lowered, you ARE in fact encouraging more torture. Additionally, when it’s legal, people will not see torture as an immoral action, therefore the decision of using torture will not be taken as serious as what we think it will be now. This is a Pandora’s Box that you cannot afford to open.

If we look at legalize torture from the fundamental purpose of law that we discussed before, when the power of torturing is abused, it will be the majority of the citizen who are threatened and will be harmed. And most of them do not have the ability to protect themselves when torture is being abused (just imagine who’s capable of abusing torture and the possible methods they can use to justify it. General public can’t even stand a fight in such cases). A good law should be able to serve as a weapon that citizens with no ruling power can use to protect themselves, and this revision on torturing clearly will not serve the purpose. Besides the theoretical righteousness this revision is protecting, it doesn’t in fact protect anything else. Therefore, torture should never be legally justified in any way under any condition.