The Torture Debate in America

Introduction: the rule of law finds its Golem: judicial torture then and now; Part I. Democracy, Terror, and Torture: 1. Tortured liberalism; 2. How to interrogate terrorists; 3. Torture: thinking about the unthinkable; 4. The curious debate; 5. Is defiance of law proof of success: magical thinking in the war on terror; 6. Through a mirror, darkly; 7. Speaking law to power: lawyers and power; 8. Engine of state and the rule of law ; 9. Torture: an interreligious debate; Part II. On the Matter of Failed States, The Geneva Conventions and International Law: 10. Unwise counsel: the war on terrorism and the criminal mistreatment of detainees in U.S. custody; 11. Rethinking the Geneva Conventions; 12. The disappearing state; 13. War not crime; Part III. On Torture: 14. Panel discussion - torture: the road to Abu Ghraib and beyond; 15. Legal ethics and other perspectives; 16. Legal ethics: a debate; 17. Lawyers know sin: complicity in torture; 18. Renouncing torture; 19. Reconciling torture with democracy; Part IV. Afterword: 20. Litigating torture: the German Criminal Prosecution21. Ugly Americans; Part V. Relevant Documents: 22. Uncharted legal territory - RE: 1949 Geneva Conventions: the Presidents decisions under International Law; 23. The torture memo - RE: standards of conduct for interrogation; 24. Redefining torture Memo - RE: Legal standards Applicable; Part VI. Afterthought: To the American People: Report upon the Illegal practices of the United States Department of Justice

Karen J. Greenberg is the executive director of the Center on Law and Security at the New York University School of Law. She has a Ph.D. in American political history from Yale and teaches in the European Studies Department at NYU. She is a former Vice-President of the Soros Foundations/Open Society Institute and the founding director of the Program in International Education. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of numerous articles on the United States and Europe during World War II and an editor of the Archives of the Holocaust, Columbia University Series. She is the co-editor of the recently published The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib.

"With this superb collection of documents, we can begin to see the contours of our new post 9-11 world." The Washington Post on The Torture Papers "...a block of granite on the path of any forgetfulness. The book is a true public service, compiled by two U.S. lawyers, which brings the whole twisted story into the public domain, and let us hope into every library and many personal hands." Toronto Globe "an excellent and thorough introduction ot the legal and institutional arrangements of the contemporary minority rights regime in the Western world. A great value of that book is precisely that it positions questions of minority rights and self-determination right in the analytical propinquity to democracy, and as such it manages to address an important lacuna within the rights-oriented literature of today." - Andrew Goldmsith, Law and Politics Review