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37 Case W. Res. J. Int'l L. 231 (2005-2006)
Torture in Dreamland: Disposing of the Ticking Bomb

handle is hein.journals/cwrint37 and id is 237 raw text is: TORTURE IN DREAMLAND: DISPOSING OF THE TICKING BOMB Henry Shue t Nothing has changed. The body still trembles as it trembled before Rome was founded and after, in the twentieth century before and after Christ. Tortures are just what they were, only the earth has shrunk and whatever goes on sounds as if it's just a room away. Torture is wrong.2 But sometimes we feel justified in doing what we know is wrong because the stakes are so very high. So the next question is: is torture so wrong that it is inexcusable no matter how high the stakes are'? I will argue that all actual arrangements for torture are inexcusable, in spite of the fact that we can imagine hypothetical cases, like the notorious ticking-bomb cases in which it seems excusable.3 Why are imaginary examples like ticking-bomb hypotheticals so badly misleading about how to plan for real cases? They mislead in two different ways that compound the error: idealization and abstraction.4 Idealization is the addition of positive features to an example in order to make the example better than reality, which lacks those features. Abstraction is the deletion of negative features of reality from an example in order to make the example still better than reality. Idealization adds sparkle, abstraction removes dirt. Together they make the hypothetical superior to reality and thereby a disastrously misleading analogy from which to derive conclusions about reality. The advocates of torture love a ticking bomb. But even the honest and thoughtful are mesmerized and bedeviled by the ticking-bomb hypo- t Henry Shue is a Professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford. He is grateful to intense audiences at Case Western Reserve University School of Law, Cornell University, Dickinson College, Princeton University, University of Dayton, and University of Oxford for valuable reactions to various formulations of these views and to Robert K. Fullinwider for a quarter-century of discussion of the fundamental methodological issue, often soothed by Bluegrass. The final judgments here on the relative weights of the compet- ing considerations are of course his responsibility. 1 WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA, Tortures, in WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA, VIEW WITH A GRAIN OF SAND: SELECTED POEMS 151 (Stanislaw Baranczak & Clare Cavanagh trans., 1995). 2 David Sussman provides a powerful explanation of why torture is wrong in his article in this volume. David Sussman, Defining Torture, 37 CASE W. RES. J. INT'L L. (2006). 3 David Luban, Torture, American-Style: This Debate Comes Down to Words vs. Deeds, WASH. POST, Nov. 27, 2005, at B 1 (illustrating what a serious distraction from reality tick- ing-bomb cases are in the current U.S. debates). 4 My account of these two intellectual processes is roughly derived from Onora O'Neill, Ethical Reasoning and Ideological Pluralism, 98 ETHICS 705, 711-12 (1988).

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