Against Dershowitz On The Wits of Torture

There is no doubt that Alan Dershowitz has contributed much to the world of philosophy and law. From becoming the youngest law professor at Harvard to his work as a prominent civil rights attorney to being a regular correspondent of the Arab-Israeli Conflict on Fox News, Dershowitz has certainly soared far and wide throughout his academic career. I find that, in spite of how intellectual credible Dershowitz is, his view on torture (specifically its relation to the effectiveness of preventing potential terrorist threats) to be quite absurd. Despite his confident stance on the effectiveness of torture, Dershowitz never seems to enlist any concrete evidence of a particular circumstance to when torture actually prevented a terrorist attack. Moreover, Dershowitz attempts to justify torture with the use of a signed warrant from a judge but he fails to see that this feigned solution still makes torture illegal under national and international law.

In his “Want to Torture? Get a Warrant” piece in the San Francisco Gate, Dershowitz remains very vehement about the effectiveness of torture but rarely gives substantial evidence to back up this claim. According to Dershowitz, there was much “information to prevent terrorist acts” (Dershowitz, 2). But in spite of making such a strong claim, he never provides the audience with a particular event to when this actually occurred. Dershowitz simply states, “several attacks were prevented” (Dershowitz, 3). The reason why I press Dershowitz on this issue is not that I doubt his credibility, but that if our supposedly democratic nation is willing to strip a person of his rights, his dignity, and his time, we need to be more vigilant and truthful of the effectiveness of this extremely aggressive tactic. I understand that the September 11th attacks has thrown this country into a spiralling cycle of fear and uncertainty, but that this is no reason to resort to utter barbarity. We have seen time and time again that this “ticking bomb” scenario is too hypothetical and far-fetched to happen in the real world; and that torture violates international law, “produce[s] little information of value in preventing terrorism,” and only “result[s] in false answers” (Shane, 3). If our nation is going to employ these illegal and brutal tactics in order to gain valuable information of a terrorist’s whereabouts, we must be extremely certain that these tactics actually work.

Moreover Dershowitz agreeably states that torture is wrong, unless a judge agrees to sign a “torture warrant.” Firstly, why would a judge, assuming that she or he is legitimate and incorruptible, approve of something that violates constitutional and international law? Torture does not just violate the eighth amendment of the Bill of Rights, which clearly condemns the infliction of “cruel and unusual punishments” but it also violates Article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (US Const. amend. VIII; The United Nations, 1948, art. 5). Secondly, even if a judge is willing to cross such an ethical boundary for the sake of national security, the judge still has to abide by these laws (because he or she took an ought to them). According to Dershowitz, simply by issuing a ‘torture warrant,’ torture would be “consistent with [our] democratic values” and would limit the “nonlethal means” of torture (Dershowitz, 2). The nonlethal means that Dershowitz specifically refers to is having sterile needles so the torturer would not endanger the lives of his tortured detainees when “insert[ing needles] beneath the fingernails to cause excoriating pain” (Dershowitz, 3). The point that Dershowitz does not seem to grasp is not that torture requires further regulation, but that it needs to be abolished on the basis of its illegality, immorality, and basic violation of one’s humanity. The problem is not that the tools or devices our government uses for torture are not “sterile” or hygienic, it is that our government is willing to put a person under excruciating pain, which is imaginable to the human condition, just to obtain information (which usually ends in false confessions as a desperate attempts to escape this pain). Having a judge (assuming that she would even agree to act outside the law) warrant the use of medieval tactics like sleep deprivation, smashing people into walls or waterboarding. especially without the right to due process, would not make these international or constitutional violations vanish (Dershowitz, 2). In fact, if we used these overly aggressive tactics to interrogate potential terrorists, it would just seem as though we are using torture for more retributive reasons than protective ones. If we employed Dershowitz’ solution of the “torture warrant,” it would delegitimize our democracy by making our laws so easily alterable that any judge could approve of any unlawful action under the name of national security, and it would shame us on an international level. Although Dershowitz recognizes the horrors of torture and, like many Americans, is very fearful of yet another imminent terrorist attack, employing his “torture warrant” solution is simply too trivial and illegal to execute on a gubernatorial level.

I understand that Dershowitz attempts to assuage the issue of torture and its clear violation of national and global law. However, he neither gives any evidence to torture’s efficacy nor does his warrant solution prove itself to be potent enough to work in the real world. In my humble opinion, torture is just inexcusable. Like slavery or the CIA coups against the Nicaraguan and Guatemalan governments, torture will forever remain a dark scar in American history. It is in our duty, as the democratic nation, to prove that we could address our national security concerns without the use of such Machiavellian and perturbing means like torture.

Works Cited

Dershowitz, Alan "Want to Torture? Get a Warrant." SFGate. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Apr. 2016.

Shane, Scott. "Report Portrays a Broken C.I.A. Devoted to a Failed Approach." The New York Times. The New York Times, 09 Dec. 2014. Web. 26 Apr. 2016.

The United Nations. Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 1948. Print

US Const. amend. VIII. Print.