Terrorism: Documents of International and Local Control is a hardbound series that provides primary-source documents on the worldwide counter-terrorism effort. Chief among the documents collected are transcripts of Congressional testimony, reports by such federal government bodies as the Congressional Research Service and the Government Accountability Office, and case law covering issues related to terrorism. Most volumes carry a single theme, and inside each volume the documents appear within topic-based categories. The series also includes a subject index and other indices that guide the user through this complex area of the law.
Detainee Treatment, Interrogation and Extraordinary Rendition in the War Against Terrorists leads researchers through the legal background to the headline-grabbing issue of coercive interrogation. The centerpiece of the volume is the section on the Yoo memo, a document prepared by the Bush Administration to lay the supposedly legal foundation for torturing detainees suspected of terrorism. While many press reports have discussed and partially quoted the memorandum, this volume constitutes the first publication of both the memo’s full text and expert commentary thereof. General Editor Douglas Lovelace also equips readers with the background treaties and statutes necessary to understand the issue (the U.N. Convention Against Torture, the McCain Amendment to the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, etc.), and he in turn makes those laws more comprehensible with his own thought-provoking analysis of them. Now that the question of torture’s legality has become such a prominent topic in law school classrooms and in the halls of Congress, both students and policymakers will find a uniquely comprehensive and accessible resource for their queries in Volume 95 of Terrorism.
