Lisa Hajjar will discuss her new book which traces the fight against the US torture policy in the “war on terror.” This fight was waged by lawyers who used the courts to challenge the government’s gross violations of law. Their victories, though few and far between, forced the government to change the way prisoners were treated and focused attention on state crimes perpetrated in the shadows. If not for these lawyers, US torture would have gone unchallenged because elected officials and the American public, with a few exceptions, did nothing to oppose it. This war in court has been fought to defend the principle that there is no legal right to torture.

Lisa Hajjar is a Professor of Sociology at the University of California – Santa Barbara. Her work focuses on issues relating to law and conflict, including military courts and occupations, torture, targeted killing, war crimes, and human rights. Her publications include Courting Conflict: The Israeli Military Court System in the West Bank and Gaza (University of California Press, 2005) and Torture: A Sociology of Violence and Human Rights (Routledge 2013). Her new book, The War in Court: Inside the Long Fight against Torture, is published by the University of California Press. She is a founding co-editor of Jadaliyya and a member of the editorial committee of Middle East Report.