The Appeal Of The Mccain Feinstein Amendment - 935 Words

The appeal of the McCain-Feinstein amendment is its comparatively restrictive nature. In the words of constitutional law professor, David Cole, with particular reference to the past actions of the Bush administration, ‘the new legislation seems designed to prevent future administrations from interpreting existing laws to permit what they were plainly designed to prohibit’ (Cole, D 2015). In other words, the amendment approaches the problem from a different perspective in contrast to previous prohibitions. Rather than expressing a broad prohibition, it restricts interrogators to a definitive list of approved techniques (Feinstein, D 2015). This approach, thus, essentially avoids the ambiguity that has become an enduring quality of international human rights law in relation to torture (Cole, D 2015; Levinson, S 2015, pp. 2017-2018). In succinct terms, if a technique is not authorised, it is affirmatively prohibited. To this avail, in stark contrast with its predecessors, this legislation may yet prove to be instrumental in the prevention of torture. In spite of its acclaimed innovation, critics call attention to the fact that, likewise, the McCain-Feinstein amendment cannot escape the ‘definition debate’ that plagues the discourse surrounding torture. In reference to this, a proponent of this thesis may advance the case of Appendix M. Whereby, under the circumstance, Appendix M could be conceivably read as permitting ‘torture lite’. The point being, as the proponent