Sadat: Extraordinary Rendition, Torture and Other Nightmares from the War on Terror

Leila N. Sadat (Washington Univ., St. Louis - Law) has posted Extraordinary Rendition, Torture and Other Nightmares from the War on Terror (George Washington Law Review, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

This article examines the U.S. practice of extraordinary rendition, a method of transferring detainees abroad for detention and interrogation either from the United States, on behalf of the United States, or from occupied Iraq. It concludes that rendition does not comply with either international human rights norms or the laws of war. The article examines the Nuremberg consensus arrived at following the Second World War, which provided for individual criminal responsibility for the commission of crimes under international law, and suggests that following the Nuremberg principles would be more effective than extralegal government activity. The article disputes the propositions of conservative government lawyers and their academic surrogates that Geneva law is now either quaint or obsolete; instead, it argues that the government has made what is, at best, a tenuous case that Geneva law and international human rights norms are inconvenient. If the administration is sincere in its claim that new international legal paradigms must be adopted in order to successfully combat the scourge of international terrorism, the appropriate vehicle to do so would be the establishment of new multilateral regimes that attract broad international support, not creative are interpretations of the law that are patently inconsistent with prior U.S. and international understandings.