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The End of Reciprocity

The End of Reciprocity Terror, Torture, and the Law of War

Author: Mark Osiel
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521730143
Published In: April 2009
Format: Paperback
Jurisdiction: International ? Disclaimer:
Countri(es) stated herein are used as reference only

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Why should America restrain itself in detaining, interrogating, and targeting terrorists when they show it no similar forbearance? Is it fair to expect one side to fight by more stringent rules than the other, placing itself at disadvantage? Is the disadvantaged side then permitted to use the tactics and strategies of its opponent? If so, then America's most controversial counterterrorism practices are justified as commensurate responses to indiscriminate terror.

Yet different ethical standards prove entirely fitting, the author finds, in a conflict between a network of suicidal terrorists seeking mass atrocity at any cost and a constitutional democracy committed to respecting human dignity and the rule of law. The most important reciprocity involves neither uniform application of fair rules nor their enforcement by a simple-minded tit-for-tat.

Real reciprocity instead entails contributing to an emergent global contract that encompasses the law of war and from which all peoples may mutually benefit.

Contents:: Introduction; Part I. Reciprocity in Humanitarian Law:; 1. Reciprocity in the law of war: ambient sightings, ambivalent soundings; 2. Reciprocity in humanitarian law: acceptance and repudiation; 3. Humanitarian vs. human rights law: the coming clash; Part II. The Ethics of Torture as Reciprocity:; 4. Is torture uniquely degrading? The unpersuasive answer of liberal jurisprudence; 5. Fairness in terrorist war (1): Rawlsian reciprocity; 6. Fairness in terrorist war (2): Kantian reciprocity; 7. Humanitarian law as corrective justice: do targeted killing and torture ‘correct’ for terror?; Part III. Reciprocity in the Social Science of War:; 7. Reciprocity as civilization: the terrorist as savage; 9. The inflationary rhetoric of terrorist threat: humanitarian law as deflationary check; 10. Reciprocity as tit-for-tat: rational retaliation in modern war; 11. The ‘gift’ of humanitarianism: soft power and benevolent signaling; Part IV. The End of Reciprocity:; 12. Sources of national restraint in martial honor: the JAGs’ intercession; 13. Sources of anti-reciprocity in national self-respect and transnational identity; Conclusion.