Suppose British security services apprehend a terrorist carrying a load of explosives at one of the entrances to the London Underground. Would they be justified in torturing him in order to prevent other terrorists from inflicting imminent large-scale suffering and loss of human life on the public transport system? Should liberal democracies refrain from using torture in all circumstances, either regardless of the consequences or because the overall ill effects of its use always outweigh its advantages? Nearly three decades ago Henry Sue invoked a standard philosophical example just like this one in his essay on torture. More recently, Alan Dershowitz asks: what if on September 11 law enforcement officials had “arrested terrorists boarding one of the planes and learned that other planes, then airborne, were heading towards unknown occupied buildings?”

As Jean Bethke Elshtain observes, this is the way the debate on torture was usually carried out, even before September 11, 2001, and it is indeed difficult to find an essay on torture that does not contain its own variation on the theme of these examples. Elshtain continues,