This article focuses on the question of whether we should see terrorists as criminals, who are both bound and protected, as all citizens are, by the criminal law, or as enemy combatants with whom we are engaged in a war and who are entitled the protection of the rules of war, or as “unlawful combatants”who are entitled to no such protection. It argues that, however terrible their actions, they are minimally entitled to be treated as enemy combatants; and it discusses the dilemma that can be presented by the prospect of using torture to extract essential, life-saving information.
