Torture, Terror, and Trade-offs: Philosophy for the White House.

• Author: Martinez, Nicolas L.
• Position: Book review

Torture, Terror, and Trade-Offs: Philosophy for the White House, By Jeremy Waldron, Oxford University Press, 2010. ($30.00).

Most Americans are familiar with the "ticking time-bomb" scenarios popularized in the aftermath of 9/11 by TV shows like Fox's 24. (1) As the hypothetical commonly goes, you are an interrogator who has detained the one terrorist with knowledge of how to prevent a large-scale attack from transpiring. One may contort the hypothetical to make it as heart-rending as possible--the attack involves certain nuclear annihilation of the town where one's close family resides while the captured terrorist is none other than, say, Osama bin Laden. For many of us the answer would be clear: torturing the detainee in such an extreme scenario--but perhaps only in such an extreme scenario--would be acceptable (others may even say laudable). Courageously, Professor Jeremy Waldron's answer would be a simple, unequivocal "No". (2)

Torture, Terror, and Trade-Offs, a 2010 compilation of Waldron's principal writings on the "War on Terror," provides a rich philosophical discussion of some of the most controversial issues facing a post-9/11 United States. And yet, the first major lesson that Professor Waldron would have his students internalize is that although "[t]hings changed on September 11, 2001 ... not everything changed." (3) This opening salvo establishes what the reader will soon recognize as Waldron's dogged absolutism, which pervades this anthology with impressive consistency. Beginning with the very first Chapter, Waldron chastises the silence of churches on the issue of torture and the equivocation of putative "moral philosophers," many of whom became perfectly amenable to lesser forms of torture, "torture lite," following the terrorist attacks of 9/11. (4) In response to these perceived offenses, the author repeatedly emphasizes that the legal prohibition on torture--as well as terrorism for that matter--was and remains unequivocal and unconditional regardless of what happened on September 11. (5)

Waldron further develops his unflinching views on torture in Chapter 7, "Torture and Positive Law," the signature piece of this compilation. (6) Here the author cites the non-derogation clauses found in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the U.N. Convention Against Torture (CAT), and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) as prime evidence that States Parties to these international agreements intended that their bans on torture be absolute rather than conditional. (7) Waldron argues that if these absolute prohibitions...