The focus in on the Japanese practice of obtaining confessions from suspects through various coercive techniques. "Forced signed confessions, still considered the "king of evidence" by Japanese courts, are often the result."

"'Justice' Japanese style", Japan Times

-- TheodoreSmith - 30 Jan 2008

If one look at this practice from the transcendental nonsense view, I guess one could say that people justify their opinions and actions internally by deciding what they morally and/or practically want, which is then packaged externally in a way that reflects what they think others want (or want to hear) combined with what they think they can get away with. A self-interested balancing act, to be sure. I know Cohen wasn't phrasing things this ego-centrically, but I think the social forces to which refers are implemented through this thought process. Is my position too cynical?

-- BarbPitman - 30 Jan 2008

I don't think your position is too cynical. I think that a lot of social forces, including law, are self-interested actions packaged as good for the general whole, and some of them are.

However,if we are justifying a position to torture morally or ethically, I think it moves beyond transcendental nonsense (even when packaging it to what others want to hear). Cohen says at page 310 that a competent legislature considers both the facts but also political and ethical judgments. I think if we said that torture is disallowed because, as a country, we are ethically opposed to it, it moves into the land of the real world and beyond the land of "legal speak."

-- JenniferBurke - 31 Jan 2008