HLS Profs Weigh in On Targeted Killings

The January 23 news article "HLS Profs Weigh in on Targeted Killings" stated that a 2002 book by Frankfurter Professor of Law Alan M. Dershowitz "drew fire from many civil libertarians because it advocated torture of terror suspects in certain instances." While critics of Dershowitz have made those claims, the article should have noted that Dershowitz' book, "Why Terrorism Works," does not recommend torture. And Dershowitz has stated publicly, including in The Scottsman newspaper in May 2004, that he is "personally opposed to torture."

This issue is sufficiently nuanced as to require further clarification. In the 2002 book, Dershowitz considers a scenario in which a democratic government captures a terrorist who "knows or probably knows the location of a number of bombs...set to go off within the next twenty-four hours." Dershowitz wrote that the government could "forgo any use of torture and simply allow the preventable terrorist act to occur." But he acknowledged that such an approach would provoke "a great outcry in any democracy," and that in such a scenario, the United States probably would find a way to facilitate the torture of the suspect. He writes: "The real issue, therefore, is not whether some torture would or would not be used in the ticking bomb case -- it would. The question is whether it would be done openly, pursuant to a previously established legal procedure, or whether it would be done secretly, in violation of existing law."