Tuesday
Strict scrutiny
I'm currently reading, for evaluation purposes, a law review article on the subject of torture. Note to article authors who somehow find this post: I'm not talking about your article, there are tons of articles submitted on the topic of torture. And I've barely started reading this one, so I don't know how I'll come out on it, or even what position it argues for. Nevertheless, I thought it might be worth posting the test I've settled on for articles arguing for a position other than blanket prohibition on governmental interrogative torture, and use utilitarian or consequentialist arguments to justfiy their position.
The test is: does the article explictly address, or otherwise suggest that the author has considered, how serious would a potential attack have to be to justify the author's child (lacking a child read significant other, lacking that read parent) could be very gradually eviscerated with a power drill(particular torture written in white text because it's not particularly important to my point and to spare the hypothetical sensitivites of hypothetical readers) because the government reasonably believes that the author innocently overheard a terrorist plot being discussed in detail, and is refusing to disclose it. Failing to address this means the article is not taking its topic sufficiently seriously.
As a final note, I have never before applied this test, I developed it after reading an article published in a 2006 issue of a top ten law review article. I'm not sure why I'm being coy about what article it is, but if anyone is interested, I'll provide a link.
Update: The text which I tried to make only visible if highlighted is in fact not the same color as the page background. Unfortunately, I lack even the minimal source reading skills to figure out which command in the page source sets the background color of this page.
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The test is: does the article explictly address, or otherwise suggest that the author has considered, how serious would a potential attack have to be to justify the author's child (lacking a child read significant other, lacking that read parent) could be very gradually eviscerated with a power drill(particular torture written in white text because it's not particularly important to my point and to spare the hypothetical sensitivites of hypothetical readers) because the government reasonably believes that the author innocently overheard a terrorist plot being discussed in detail, and is refusing to disclose it. Failing to address this means the article is not taking its topic sufficiently seriously.
As a final note, I have never before applied this test, I developed it after reading an article published in a 2006 issue of a top ten law review article. I'm not sure why I'm being coy about what article it is, but if anyone is interested, I'll provide a link.
Update: The text which I tried to make only visible if highlighted is in fact not the same color as the page background. Unfortunately, I lack even the minimal source reading skills to figure out which command in the page source sets the background color of this page.
