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What Went Wrong? Torture And The Office Of Legal Counsel In The Bush Administration, Robert F. Turner Jan 2010

What Went Wrong? Torture And The Office Of Legal Counsel In The Bush Administration, Robert F. Turner

Campbell Law Review

Were mistakes made in the preparation of the controversial OLC memoranda? There is no question about it; they were very serious mistakes, and they have harmed this country. But I think part of the explanation is that the authors of the "torture" memoranda lacked sufficient expertise in national security law, and honestly believed that a conflict involving more than seventy-five sovereign nations was "international" in scope. They reasonably read the language in Common Article 3 limiting its application to conflicts "occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties" as excluding its applicability to a struggle taking place …


Holding The High Ground: The Operational Calculus Of Torture And Coercive Interrogation, Joseph L. Falvey Jr., Brian D. Eck Jan 2010

Holding The High Ground: The Operational Calculus Of Torture And Coercive Interrogation, Joseph L. Falvey Jr., Brian D. Eck

Campbell Law Review

In Part I of this Article, we first consider some of the strengths and weaknesses of the partially adequate objections. In Part II, we explore torture in light of the biological distinction between pain and suffering and consider the implications of that distinction for our understanding of free will and the fighting spirit. Finally, in Part III, we suggest a more fundamental view of torture that navigates between the Scylla of naive moralizing and the Charybdis of ticking time-bombs. We propose that the debate should focus on torture's effect on our country's moral certainty, on the fighting spirit of our …


Torture And The Interrogation Of Detainees, James P. Terry Jan 2010

Torture And The Interrogation Of Detainees, James P. Terry

Campbell Law Review

Following the September 11, 2001, attack on the United States by al Qaeda, the United States captured a number of "high value" detainees who were believed to have knowledge of imminent terrorist threats against our nation and its allies. CIA operatives, who understood that the use of torture is unlawful under both international and domestic law, and above all, is abhorrent to American values, interrogated the high value detainees. The United States rejects torture as a means to garner information - a fact reflected in our domestic criminal law, but also by the country's signature on the United Nations Convention …