I was watching the Daily Show, and they had several segments about Scalia's view of the 8th Amendment and whether it covers torture. For some reason Jon Stewart was shocked to hear this interpretation.
Scalia's position is that the 8th does not cover torture because the goal of torture is not to punish a person. This made a lot of sense to me when I heard him say it, I looked it up in the dictionary and found,
punishment:A penalty imposed for wrongdoing
Torture then does not make much sense as a punishment, since it's not imposed because of any wrongdoing.
I found this to be a particularly compelling explanation because torture for interrogation purposes is already prohibited by the 5th due process clause. Numerous cases have held that police interrogation of suspects is unconstitutional because of that clause. For those who are opposed to torturing suspected terrorists, I believe their best argument lies in the 5th instead of the 8th.
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