Is It Time for Truth on Torture?

Torture no longer makes headlines.  Should it?  For a brief moment after the 2008 election, politicians, like Senator Patrick Leahy, and journalists, like Nicholas Kristof, called for a truth commission on torture.  Back then, debates over the U.S.’s standing in the world ran hot.  Those same debates have now cooled, or perhaps just been pushed far to the side.

In a fascinating article, Professor Kim Chanbonpin takes up the charge for a Truth About Torture Commission.  Professor Chanbonpin powerfully reminds the reader that the torturer (and by extension the society he or she serves and represents) suffers along with the tortured — through the destruction of our shared humanity.  She explains that government-sanctioned torture “represents a breach of social and legal norms that injures not only individuals, but society as a whole. Torture, almost by definition, requires the dehumanization of all parties involved.”

A truth commission, Chanbonpin argues, can help a society pull itself back together after a tragedy.  Such a commission might also help raise the stature of the U.S. abroad — and make America more secure — by rejecting “with-us-or-against us” rhetoric.  Professor Chanbonpin draws on examples of successful truth commissions in the U.S. related to racial violence in Greensboro, Alabama and Tulsa, Oklahoma.  These commissions took place 22 and 79 years after each cities’ respective tragedy.  Does that mean we have decades more to go?  Or is the time for healing now?

(Disclosure:  As the current editor-in-chief of the Northwestern Journal of Law and Social Policy, I helped select and prepare Prof. Chanbonpin’s article for publication.)