Academic

Calo on Torture & Emergency

By Lawrence Solum

Zachary R. Calo (Valparaiso University School of Law) has posted Torture, Necessity and Supreme Emergency: Law and Morality at the End of Law (Valparaiso University Law Review, Forthcoming) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

This paper employs Michael Walzer's concept of "Supreme Emergency" to address the permissibility of torture under conditions of necessity. It proposes moving beyond both utilitarian and deontological approaches to legal authority in order to understood necessity as a moral category. A full account of right action under conditions of necessity therefore demands taking account of the distinct yet cooperative function provided by legal and moral norms. A political official might therefore possess moral but not legal warrant to act in contravention of binding legal norms. Preserving the validity of law is essential to the economy of social reconstitution in the aftermath of political tragedy.

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on May 27, 2009 (boomark / email).