AUSTRALIAN LAW PROFESSOR ADVOCATES LEGALIZED TORTURE

Mirko Bagaric, the head of Deakin University's law school, makes a strong case for employing torture in certain circumstances:

Torture is permissible where the evidence suggests that this is the only means, due to the immediacy of the situation, to save the life of an innocent person. The reason that torture in such a case is defensible and necessary is because the justification manifests from the closest thing we have to an inviolable right: the right to self-defence, which of course extends to the defence of another. Given the choice between inflicting a relatively small level of harm on a wrongdoer and saving an innocent person, it is verging on moral indecency to prefer the interests of the wrongdoer.

Read the whole thing.

Professor Bagaric's support for torture has drawn the predictable reaction.

Update: Tim Dunlop – see "predictable" link above – entitles his post on Bagaric's toture position "Let's try it on his daughter". Why we’d want to torture Bagaric’s daughter he doesn’t say. But let’s suppose Dunlop’s daughter had been kidnapped and he had access to the suspected kidnapper. To what lengths would he go to obtain the information that would see the safe return of his daughter? Me, I’d employ whatever means – pliars, hammer, Bernz-o-matic torch, you name it – necessary to get the needed information. If Dunlop wouldn’t do the same for his child, I’d be willing to do it for him. I guess I’m just morally fucked.

Update II: For my response to lefty bloggers Tim Dunlop and John Quiggin, go here.