Prudence Flowers

Prudence Flowers is a lecturer in the history program at Flinders University. She teaches and writes about the United States, with a particular focus on social movement activism, conservative group formation and ideology, and the politics of gender and sexuality. She is the author of The Right-to-Life Movement, the Reagan Administration, and the Politics of Abortion (Palgrave, 2019). For more information, see her staff webpage: https://www.flinders.edu.au/people/prudence.flowers

Prudence Flowers reviews 'Civilizing Torture: An American tradition' by W. Fitzhugh Brundage

March 2019, no. 409 • 01 February 2019

The Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1791, prohibits the use of ‘cruel and unusual punishments’. General Order No. 100 (the Lieber Code of 1863) declares that ‘military necessity does not admit of cruelty’ and explicitly bars American soldiers from torture. The UN Convention Against Torture, which the United States signed in 1988, stipulates an absolute ban o ... (read more)