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This book gathers fourteen essays on torture, addressing its complexities from the perspectives of psychology, history, philosophy, law, and cultural commentary. It appears in the wake of the American “War on Terror,” and the apparent evaporation of a broad consensus in international law, the U.S. legal community, and public thinking that torture is never an acceptable act, even in war. The chapters of the book seek to understand the historical and cultural roots of torture; to assess its impacts on survivors, their societies, and those who engage in it or with its victims; to consider philosophical arguments about its justification; and to consider how law and lawyers should confront the problem of torture. While there is no single message or thesis running throughout the book, all of the chapters seek to bring out the complexity of torture as a social, psychological, legal and ethical problem. The introductory chapter, by torture survivor Albie Sachs, who went on to become a justice on the Constitutional Court of South Africa, demonstrates many of the challenges that torture creates for a society, and for conceiving justice in the wake of torture. Many of the subsequent chapters address the possibilities and difficulties for law and social institutions to respond effectively to torture by creating legal frameworks and structural barriers to guard against the temptations that torture offers. While none of the chapters defend using torture, many grapple with the difficulties of explaining convincingly why ethics absolutely prohibits torture.

Drone technology is racing ahead, while efforts to develop guidelines for the use of remotely piloted weapons remain underdeveloped. The emergence of lethal drones raises new questions for the ethical and legal analysis of the use of armed force and the impact on human rights. Drones have the capacity to be more accurate and discriminating, yet they do not eliminate the problems of collateral damage and civilian harm. They reduce risks for those employing such weapons, although by making the use of force appear easier and less costly, they may increase the propensity to resort to force. The lack of transparency about criteria for identifying targets and launching strikes impedes democratic accountability. Drones are considered a means of countering terrorism, but the ability to kill specific targets has not brought success in countering terrorist insurgencies in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen. This book presents the work of leading scholars and policy experts addressing these and other related questions. The authors highlight the need for the United States and other nations to work together in establishing an international regulatory framework to ensure that drones are used in compliance with ethical standards and the principles of international law.

This book offers a new interpretation of the transformation of US borders during the late twentieth century and its implications for our understanding of the nation-state as a legal and political form. It does so by examining the immigration tribunals of South Florida, the Coast Guard vessels patrolling the northern Caribbean, and the camps of Guantanamo Bay through the lens of anthropological theory, political philosophy, and law. From this perspective, the book reveals how litigation concerning the fate of Haitian asylum seekers during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s gave birth to novel jurisdictional paradigms of offshore, maritime migration policing and asylum processing. Combining ethnography—in Haiti, at Guantanamo, and alongside US migration patrols in the Caribbean—with in-depth archival research, the book expounds a theory of liberal empire’s dynamic tensions and its racialized geographies of securitization. An innovative historical anthropology of the modern legal imagination, the book forces readers to reconsider the significance of the rise of the current US immigration border and its relation to broader shifts in the legal infrastructure of contemporary nation-states across the globe.

Called a fig leaf for inaction by many at its inception, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia has surprised its critics by growing from an unfunded U.N. Security Council resolution to an institution with more than 1,000 employees and a $100 million annual budget. With Slobodan Milosevic now on trial and more than forty fellow indictees currently detained, the success of the Hague tribunal has forced many to reconsider the prospects of international justice. This book is a firsthand look at the inner workings of the tribunal as it has moved from an experimental organization initially viewed as irrelevant to the first truly effective international court since Nuremberg. Creating an institution that transcends national borders is a challenge fraught with political and organizational difficulties, yet the Hague tribunal has increasingly met these difficulties head-on and overcome them. The chief reason for its success, the author argues, is the people who have shaped it, particularly its charismatic chief prosecutor, Louise Arbour. The book re-creates how Arbour worked with others to turn the tribunal's fortunes around, reversing its initial failure to arrest and convict significant figures, and advancing the tribunal's agenda to the point at which Arbour and her colleagues, including her successor, Carla Del Ponte (nicknamed the Bulldog), were able to indict Milosevic himself. Leading readers through the investigations and criminal proceedings of the tribunal, it offers an original account of the foundation and maturity of the institution.