In the wake of the Senate Committee’s Report on the CIA’s Use of Torture, Justice Antonin Scalia, appearing before a Swiss university audience, was asked about the use of torture by our government. As reported by the Swiss news site RTS, Scalia replied: “We have never held that to be contrary to the Constitution. I don’t see any article of the Constitution that would contravene—listen, I think it’s very facile for people to say, ‘Oh, torture is terrible.’ You posit the situation where a person that you know for sure knows the location of a nuclear bomb that has been planted in Los Angeles and will kill millions of people. You think it’s an easy question? You think it’s clear that you cannot use extreme measures to get that information out of that person?”
His reference was to the TV character Jack Bauer, who sought to justify torture to defuse a bomb before Los Angeles was destroyed.
