Channel 4 News

[liadnan]

... Could be fun this evening, today's Snowmail indicates:

Lord Steyn declares that American's definition of torture is ridiculously tight (requiring as it does the death or organ failure of the tortured person before it is defined as such) . He argues that the US is almost certainly in breach of the wider definition of torture that is enshrined in the UN Torture Treaty to which the Americans and Britain's are signatures.

Lord Steyn believes that in incarcerating prisoners at Guantanamo and in so-called 'black sites' whose whereabouts are unknown, and in secretly transporting prisoners from place to place, the US may be committing war crimes. Lord Steyn's view is that if British ministers have given approval for any of these activities they too may be guilty of war crimes.

(ETA: transcript here.

(Steyn has long been one of the more liberal voices among the Lords of Appeal in Ordinary (now in Extraordinary I believe, if that's what they are once semi-retired). For those not familiar with the workings of the higher courts of the UK, it's sufficiently accurate for these purposes to think of him as a justice of the Supreme Court. Like Hoffman he's a South African emigrant)

Comments

[blonde222.livejournal.com]

do you know anything about divorce law, liadnan?

[(Anonymous)]

Nothing whatsoever, I am, frankly, glad to say. At least, not divorce law proper, or ancillary relief as such. Of course, wealthy private clients, who I fondly like to imagine are the core of my client base, frequently have acrimonious and expensive divorces, and argue about what happens to the family trust, and ancillary relief gets bound up in that, as do arguments about sham trusts and the like.