Alan Dershowitz, the Harvard law professor perhaps best-known for his defense of O.J. Simpson, is speaking tonight in Memorial Auditorium at 7PM. His arrival on the Stanford campus is prompting several student groups -- including Stanford Amnesty -- to protest and flier at the event to raise awareness of his position on torture and to more generally confront the "ticking time-bomb" debate. Here we present to you several interesting quotes and resources that we hope you can use to learn about the issue and decide for yourself where you stand on the issue.
Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz -- one of the country's leading civil libertarians -- suggests creating a mechanism where U.S. judges could approve domestic "torture warrants" if they're convinced such tactics could thwart an imminent attack.
"Everybody says they're opposed to torture. But everyone would do it personally if they knew it could save the life of a kidnapped child who had only two hours of oxygen left before death. And it would be the right thing to do," said Dershowitz.
But it's uncertain if such techniques would actually work. And if they did, could they be morally justified?
"The fact that we're even having this conversation shows how much things have changed since Sept. 11," said Stanford criminal law professor Robert Weisberg, known as a defender of civil liberties.
The strongest argument for rougher interrogations of those now custody is that getting them to talk, by whatever means, might foil future attacks -- possibly even a cataclysmic assault with a biochemical weapon or radioactive "dirty bomb" that could kill tens of thousands of Americans.
If U.S. interrogators ever were certain that extracting information forcibly was their only option to thwart a cataclysmic attack, they probably would just do it, says Charles Weisselberg, a University of California at Berkeley law professor. Yes, they would risk a civil suit and even prosecution.
But the odds are no jury would ever convict them. So, he says, there's no need to legislate permission.
The fact that some Americans now support coercive methods of interrogation, such as truth serum injections, leaves human rights advocates aghast.
"Once you break the barrier, you devalue your own civilization and you sow the seeds of future torture," warns Amnesty International spokesman Alistair Hodgett. "When any society justifies torture, it usually starts with that dramatic 'ticking time bomb' scenario, and inevitably it spreads throughout the justice system. I think it's fair to say any acknowledgment in the U.S. will send a dangerous message of tolerance to torture to be heard around the world." (San Francisco Chronicle)
