Showing papers on "Torture published in 1978"

Torture and Plea Bargaining

Abstract: In this essay I shall address the modern American system of plea bargaining from a perspective that must appear bizarre, although I hope to persuade you that it is illuminating. I am going to contrast plea bargaining with the medieval European law of torture. My thesis is that there are remarkable parallels in origin, in function, and even in specific points of doctrine, between the law of torture and the law of plea bargaining. I shall suggest that these parallels expose some important truths about how criminal justice systems respond when their trial procedures fall into deep disorder.

What Price Principle? - U.S. Policy on Human Rights

Abstract: immy Carter has helped make human rights a more impor tant factor in U.S. foreign policy and a matter of greater concern in most countries. What that concern can amount to is another matter. The perennial questions that have plagued the attempted marriage of morality and American diplomacy persist. Whose morality and at what cost to whom? Like God, Mother and Country, human rights claim universal reverence. There are no calls for torture in what passes for polite society. The average American sees the Bill of Rights as an article of faith at home and an item for emulation abroad. Everyone should enjoy certain fundamental rights ?be they political, civil, economic, cultural or social. The main question is thus not whether most Americans applaud the President's general stress on human rights. They do. It is what they are ready to do about it. Words, while important, can be cheap and misleading. What happens when U.S. support for Soviet dissidents seems to sabotage d?tente, or if future economic sanctions against South Africa undercut U.S. trade? Are most Americans aware of the Administration's argument that promotion of human rights should include efforts to help fulfill economic and social needs? If so, would they accept an added claim on their tax dollars for increased foreign aid? Is the President right in claiming that Americans are as ready to do something about lapses in their own performance on human rights as they are to point fingers at others? The answers are not clear. What public opinion analyst Pat Caddell once saw as a political asset for the Administration could become a liability. If the President proceeds on his present course of perceived retreat on human rights, he invites criticism. If, on the other hand, he pushes the concept of human rights to its

The Death of Legal Torture

Abstract: Torture and the criminal law have a long and ignominious association that continues to the present day. In his short book, poised gracefully between simplicity and learning, John Langbein discusses only one of the many forms of this association. He is concerned with torture as a legally permissible technique of obtaining evidence from the defendant in the course of judicial interrogation. In a further narrowing of focus, the author approaches judicial torture as a student of the law of evidence. He centers on the relationship of torture to standards of proof sufficiency. His main purpose is to propose a novel thesis about the abolition of judicial torture on the continent of Europe. The story begins with the collapse of the early medieval vision of reality, which assumed a continuing interpenetration of the human world and the world of the deity. This conception of reality was reflected in the magical modes of proof predicated on the assumption of divine intervention in legal proceedings. When this operative assumption became problematic, sacred legitimation of judgments had to be replaced by a secular one. One answer to this problem developed in the Roman-canon procedure, where judges, no longer able to consult the deity, began to interrogate persons likely to possess information about crimes. But, says Langbein, the subjective beliefs of terrestrial judges as to what evidence was sufficient to support a judgment could not be accepted in the afterglow of a world where court decisions were legitimated by divine intervention-especially when serious crime was in-

Torture and Philosophy

Abstract: Talking about torture involves certain risks. To talk lightly or flippantly or even detachedly about what many consider to be one of the major evils of the modem age leaves one open to charges of insensitivity or of perversion of sensibility. To suggest that the notion of torture is more complex than is commonly supposed or that it is not self-evident that all instances of torturing should be absolutely prohibited might, in some contexts, tend to have the effect of obfuscating public debate or weakening commitment or diverting attention or inhibiting action. There is even a risk that philosophical analysis of the problem may provide ammunition which could be used or abused by those who seek to justify actions which reflective and reasonable men would condemn without qualification. It has been my experience in teaching in this area that I have sometimes been regrettably persuasive when playing the r1le of Devil's Advocate. Thus talking about torture can have undesirable practical consequences or, when it has no significant consequences, it may be compared to fiddling while Rome burns. I believe these risks to be real. But they do not constitute a sufficient reason for avoiding serious academic discussion of the subject. The purpose of this paper is to attempt to elucidate certain aspects of the concept of torture as part of a prolegomenon to a general theory of torture and related phenomena. In the spirit of J. L. Austin, it is hoped that exploration of this, and some related concepts, such as inhuman or degrading treatment, will promote a sharpened awareness of phenomena and issues as well as of words. I shall concentrate on three closely related contexts, each of which deserves a brief comment. The first is the general context of public debate and scientific enquiry about "the problem of torture" in the contemporary world. It is now generally acknowledged that the practice is widespread and may be on the increase. In recent years many governments and organizations have undertaken to tackle the problem; perhaps the best known example is Amnesty International's Campaign for the Abolition of Torture. By adopting the expedient of concentrating largely on clear cases Amnesty have,

Sounding board. Violations of human rights: torture and the medical profession.

Abstract: At an Amnesty International medical seminar in Athens, Greece, March 10 and 11, 1978, 130 physicians, dentists, nurses, medical social workers and lawyers heard 27 short reports covering the following topics: careful medical and psychologic examinations of victims of torture; research on the subsurface effects of refined torture technics such as electric shock, and the extensive activities of physician groups in Europe and Greece in writing letters to authorities in countries where workers in the health professions have disappeared, presumably into state prisons. Also covered were the legal measures to compensate torture victims when a dictatorship returns to democracy as . . .

What does the Prohibition of “Torture or Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment” Mean? the Interpretation of the European Commission and Court of Human Rights

Abstract: Article 3 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms states that:“No-one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”.

KGB psychiatry - out but not down

Abstract: The basic facts about the corruption of Soviet psychiatry are now beyond doubt. It has taken ten years to have them widely accepted, and Australian psychiatrists and public opinion have played an honourable part in the process.1 But the poison of Drs Morozov, Lunts, and Snezhnevsky - like that of apartheid, or torture in Latin America, or thought reform in China - runs alarmingly wide and deep. It seems unlikely that a further decade will suffice for cutting off the flow at source and applying massive antidotes to the body medical of the world's largest country.