I'm Inclined to legalize torture proving it is mild electric shocks. that leaves no scar or permanent damage! Cannot therefore, be applied to the head or heart region.

And must be accompanied by unbeatable space-age lie detection accompanied by recorded sound effects of grown men screaming, begging for mama.

Also, the interviewee advised that lying could result in electric shocks amping up.

Advised when the unbeatable, space-age, lie detection equipment detects deception or an intention to deceive!

Advised that this procedure could have lethal consequences. Could include the use of sodium phenobarbitol initially?

If getting verifiable information from a genocidal maniac kills the bar steward, but results in the saving of as little as one innocent life, then it is a righteous result!

After all the interviewee has at all times the opportunity to give up the critical information and unbeatable space-age, lie detection could establish if the interviewee has any useful information, to begin with!? Beforehand! And verified by at least two qualified and senior officers!

Moreover, those we need to interview in the proscribed manner, have no such scruples or code of legitimate conduct.

Live among us ready to strike as ordered, without a qualm!

And may use fire as a weapon when the landscape it a tinder-dry environment waiting to explode into a firestorm!? May use fire as their weapon of choice with no compunction, to try to maximise the kill, regardless of how much innocent blood they may spill!

Given this is undeniably so, should be shown no quarter in eliciting information!

Reliable and confirmed information should be rewarded and the interviewee treated like royalty!

Then electronically tagged with injectable technology and released?

And thereafter, completely covertly, monitored around the clock! Phone tapped, domicile bugged etc. After all, we would want to collect and contain the entire cell and any and all handlers if possible. Or eliminate with extreme prejudice if not!
Alan B.

Just get rid of criminal defence lawyers & all will be good !

Injustice is probably the most widespread form of torture !

Australia dos not need to legalise torture. let's just do what the yanks do and "outsource" it to another country where interrogation techniques are "traditional".

How do you get to the article?

“the legalization of torture would significantly distort our moral experience of the world”
What does ‘our moral experience of the world’ mean?

“the very notion of law itself, … does not rule through abject terror”
Not until we legalise torture.

“the law is, after all, meant to replace sheer brutality as a way of getting people to do things”
Citation please. I thought the law was to protect civil rights, even those violated by surreptitious, subtle, or mild measures.

“under the Third Reich … torture was "transformed into a medical specialty, "... The Nuremberg trials revealed that physicians had, for example, placed prisoners in low-pressure tanks simulating high altitude, immersed them in near-freezing water, and had them injected with live typhus organisms.”

Sam, this was engaging in scientific and medical experiments with a depraved indifference to the welfare of the subjects. As bad as it was, it was not torture, for the simple reason that suffering was not the intention of the perpetrators.

“…in short the victim is denied any inherent worth and therefore any moral consideration.”
Well, he was the combatant caught out of uniform in the theater of war who only screams “allahu akbar” when questioned. By the Geneva Convention we are justified in placing him against a wall and shooting him. Are you saying we can do that but not torture him?