Hypothetical Torture in the “War on Terrorism”

Discussions about torture often start with this hypothetical: Imagine that there is a terrorist in the middle of Manhattan who has planted a nuclear bomb set to go off within hours. You capture him and are faced with a moral dilemma. Do you torture him to get the information that will allow you to defuse the bomb, thereby saving the lives of millions of people? Or do you stand on principle and sacrifice multitudes?

By Kim Lane Scheppele

Kim Lane Scheppele joined the Princeton faculty in 2005 after nearly a decade on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania School of Law, where she was the John J. O'Brien Professor of Comparative Law, as well as Professor of Sociology. Before that, she taught from 1984-1996 at the University of Michigan, where her primary appointment was in political science, and where she held secondary appointments in the law school and in what has become the Ford School of Public Policy. She is a former LAPA fellow (2004-2005), a former fellow at the Internationales Forchungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften (Vienna) (1995), a senior fellow at the National Constitution Center (1998-1999), a faculty fellow at the Michigan Institute for the Humanities (1991-1992) and the recipient of multiple grants from the American National Science Foundation for residential field work abroad. She received her PhD in sociology from the University of Chicago (1985) and her A.B. in urban studies from Barnard College (1975).

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