New at Author Interviews: Sanford Levinson, editor of Torture: A Collection and author of many books and articles, generously responded to a few of questions about his subject and his book.Cary Federman, author of The Body and the State: Habeas Corpus and American Jurisprudence and a professor in the Department of Justice Studies at Montclair State University, researched and developed the questions.
One exchange from the interview:
Federman: The philosopher Michael Walzer says that government officials always operate with dirty hands. What is your position on rendition, that is, the policy of sending suspected terrorists to countries that will use torture, so that the United States keeps its hands clean?Read more about Torture: A Collection at the Oxford University Press website.
Levinson: I think that rendition is a fundamentally dishonest and corrupting policy precisely inasmuch as it allows US officials to lie to the public and pretend that we're really not implicated in the reality of torture. And, of course, there is little doubt that the US has violated both national and international law in its use of "renditions," which has contributed to the contempt directed at the US around the world. [read on]
Sanford Levinson holds the W. St. John Garwood and W. St. John Garwood, Jr. Centennial Chair in Law at the University of Texas Law School.
Earlier this year he applied the "Page 69 Test" to his most recent book, Our Undemocratic Constitution: Where the Constitution Goes Wrong (and How We the People Can Correct It).
Author Interviews: Sanford Levinson
--Marshal Zeringue
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