One of our goals at the St. Albans School of Public Service is to encourage our students to ask the "hard questions" about public policy -- to look beyond black and white and see the gray in any situation. Over the past several days, our students have had several opportunities to ask those hard questions. On Sunday, the SPS 2013 students and visiting international students from the International Boys' School Coalition Student Forum joined together to consider the issues of the U.S. use of "enhanced interrogation" techniques (such as waterboarding) after 9/11. The two groups first watched the movie "Zero Dark Thirty," which begins with an extended interrogation scene. After the movie, the SPS and IBSC groups mingled together to consider a case study on "enhanced interrogation" authored by St. Albans School of Public Service faculty member Ms. Chapin Duke. The case took the students step-by-step through the practical and legal justifications for the use of such techniques, and ultimately asked the students to put themselves in the shoes of U.S. policymakers: "where do you go from here, if you are in a position to affect U.S. policy on these matters? You're stuck with the good, the bad, and the ugly -- what path do you follow forward?This afternoon the SPS students continued the process of asking the hard questions during a visit with United States District Court Judge James Boasberg at the United States District Court. Judge Boasberg, using the time-honored socratic method, put the students in the shoes of a prosecutor or judge and evaluate the factors they would consider in choosing, first, whether to prosecute a given crime; and then how to sentence a defendant who has pled guilty. As the students are coming to learn, there are very few easy decisions, regardless of the context!
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| Future legal eagles? Sarah I. and Kate outside the U.S. Courthouse |
