Law-makers breaking the law: torture as a justified interrogation technique?
Law-makers breaking the law: torture as a justified
interrogation technique?
1
Introduction
It was Jeremy Bentham who thought of a famous method to give ethics a rational basis.
He was fed up with the penal laws where offenders met corporate punishment and
together with Cesario Beccaria he stood up to torture, corporal punishment, and the
death penalty. He resisted against irrational moral emotions as the instigation for ethical
conduct, saying only reasonable grounds could justify the moral decisions of individuals
and legislators. And now his theory of is the one that is known for justifying torture
(Verplaetse, 2008).
Since 9/11 and the following fight against terrorism it became clear that the Bush