ABSTRACT
Human rights have become, in the early twenty-first century, a form of global secular religion. This chapter explores whether it is morally justifiable for a state to torture a terrorist in order to save many innocent lives. This question is of some relevance after 9/11 in the United States. A related question is the extent to which the security of the citizens should be, as the ancient Roman orator Cicero put it, 'the supreme law' for government. Three questions give concrete examples of how human rights may or may not buckle under the weight of the demands of state necessity or state security: the infamous Abu Qatada case in the United Kingdom; the fate of the human rights movement in the United Kingdom in the post-9/11 age of hyper-terrorism; and the historical precedent of the British Empire and the rule of law. Judges in a supra-national 'removed' environment could approach legal issues over human rights insulated from political pressures.
