ABSTRACT

Here is Shue’s unadorned summary of the report: “scores of governments are now using some torture-including governments that are widely viewed as fairly civilized-and a number of governments are heavily dependent upon torture for their very survival.”3 In the years since, many governments still use torture, which is to say, they deliberately inflict pain on individuals in their custody. Some governments have abandoned the practice, some did not survive, some have started the practice. That the government of the United States now engages in activities that seem like torture to many observers has attracted an enormous amount of attention. For the most part, observers condemn torture on moral and legal grounds. Governments rarely justify its practice or even admit to engaging in it, both because most government officials would prefer to avoid public condemnation and because international law, in the form of a widely ratified multilateral convention, requires that states treat torture as a criminal offense subject to extradition.4