http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202904867310&rss=newswire
Ultra-conservative Supreme Court Justice Scalia made statements a few weeks ago, which can be read in the above link. I'm sure some Supreme Court historians began to sweat profusely after seeing or hearing what Scalia said regarding the potential use of torture of enemies or terrorists. Ultimately, it came down to a "I cannot define it, but I will know it when I see it," statement that opens up an entire can of worms. Of course, this same method of discovery and decision appeared in the Obscenity cases some 40 years ago, which saw our 9 prestigious justices having late-nite movie gatherings watching pornos to decide whether they violated the Constitution of the USA. (Some justices reportedly did not participate) But the ones who did could not define obscenity in exact terms, other than to say we know it when we see it.
As you can imagine, this ultimately means nothing is obscene, until the Supreme Court says it is. The high court even went as far as to overturn lower court decisions, basically saying they didnt' know how to judge whether something was obscene or not. Now, what Scalia discussed is something I cannot totally disagree with, because as often the case context does matter, and there are rarely, if any, clear drawn lines on any situation. Unfortunately, his statements may be used by our power-driven administration to justify any uses of torture against terrorists. Again, I believe in rare circumstances like hidden bombs in LA or NYC, any city for that matter there must be methods (ok, yeah torture) to obtain the information needed to avoid disaster. Separate from these rare occasions, I cannot see how the USA could use torture, and at the same time spread its human-rights beliefs around the world. In fact, often this spread of human rights and democracy for all, is our justification for getting involved in international conflicts. It is clearly full-blown hypocrisy, which only fuels the hatred that many foreigners currently hold towards the US and its people. I am not saying Scalia has adopted a position of hypocrisy, or intended to create that sort of situation. I just hope his statements aren't used in ill-conceived ways by those who are willing to create situations of act now, answer questions later.
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