“Rendition” refers to the transfer of a detained person to another jurisdiction for trial. For most purposes it is the same thing as extradition.
“Extraordinary rendition,” however, leaves out the trial. It means the transfer of a prisoner elsewhere for purposes of interrogation and, too often, torture.
“Putting ‘extraordinary’ in front of rendition changes the meaning fundamentally,” wrote constitutional scholar Louis Fisher in a comprehensive new law review article on the subject (pdf).
“Rendition operates within the rule of law; extraordinary rendition falls outside. Rendition brings suspects to federal or state court; extraordinary rendition does not.”
See “Extraordinary Rendition: The Price of Secrecy” by Louis Fisher, American University Law Review, volume 57, number 5, June 2008.
There are intermediate cases. When Israeli agents kidnapped the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann from Argentina in 1960, it was an act of abduction rather rendition. Yet Eichmann was taken to trial with full legal process.
“Because there was no extradition treaty between Israel and Argentina, the U.N. Security Council asked Israel to pay reparations to Argentina, and Israel complied,” Fisher recalled.
No one will be surprised if we end up with a continuing resolution to push our shutdown deadline out past the midterms, so the real question is what else will they get done this summer?
Rebuilding public participation starts with something simple — treating the public not as a problem to manage, but as a source of ingenuity government cannot function without.
If the government wants a system of learning and adaptation that improves results in real time, it has to treat translation, utilization, and adaptation as core functions of governance rather than as afterthoughts.
Coordination among federal science agencies is essential to ensure government-wide alignment on R&D investment priorities. However, the federal R&D enterprise suffers from egregious siloization.