Torture, Power, and Law [Hardcover]

David Luban analyzes the torture debate in the struggle against terrorism from a sophisticated philosophical and legal perspective.Philosopher and legal ethicist David Luban is one of the leading US voices in the torture debate. This volume brings together his most important writings on torture and executive power and includes two new essays which analyze what torture is and discuss the Obama administration's failure to hold torturers accountable.Philosopher and legal ethicist David Luban is one of the leading US voices in the torture debate. This volume brings together his most important writings on torture and executive power and includes two new essays which analyze what torture is and discuss the Obama administration's failure to hold torturers accountable.This volume brings together the most important writing on torture and the 'war on terror by one of the leading US voices in the torture debate. Philosopher and legal ethicist David Luban reflects on this contentious topic in a powerful sequence of essays including two new and previously unpublished pieces. He analyzes the trade-offs between security and human rights, as well as the connection between torture, humiliation, and human dignity, the fallacy of using ticking bomb scenarios in debates about torture, and the ethics of government lawyers. The book develops an illuminating and novel conception of torture as the use of pain and suffering to communicate absolute dominance over the victim. Factually stimulating and legally informed, this volume provides the clearest analysis to date of the torture debate. It brings the story up to date by discussing the Obama administration's failure to hold torturers accountable.Preface; Part I. Downgrading Rights and Expanding Power During Post-9/11 Panic: 1. The war on terrorism and the end of human rights; 2. Eight fallacies about liberty and security; Part II. The Ticking Bomb as Moral Fantasy and Moral Fraud: 3. Liberalism, torture, and the ticking bomb; 4. Unthinkinl³|