US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said that aggressive interrogation could be appropriate to learn where a bomb was hidden shortly before it was set to explode or to discover the plans or whereabouts of a terrorist group.

“It seems to me you have to say, as unlikely as that is, it would be absurd to say you couldn’t, I don’t know, stick something under the fingernail, smack him in the face. It would be absurd to say you couldn’t do that,” Scalia told British Broadcasting Radio Corp.

“I suppose it’s the same thing about so-called torture,” he said in the interview. “Is it really so easy to determine that smacking someone in the face to find out where he has hidden the bomb that is about to blow up Los Angeles is prohibited by the Constitution?

“Is it obvious, that what can’t be done for punishment can’t be done to exact information that is crucial to the society? I think it’s not at all an easy question, to tell you the truth.”

Scalia, a judicial icon among American conservatives, an acerbic wit and often abrasive personality, said Europeans had no business “smugly” decrying those techniques as torture. Earlier in the interview he also faced down criticism of the U.S. death penalty.

“Europeans get really quite self-righteous, you know, (saying) ‘no civilized society uses it.’ They used it themselves — 30 years ago,” he said, adding that a majority of Europeans probably supported capital punishment anyway.

Scalia said that neither he nor any of the eight other Supreme Court justices who collectively make up the United States’ highest court should be seen as setting the moral tone for the international community.

“I don’t look to their law, why do they look to mine?” he said.

Scalia also took issue with his “tough guy” reputation, saying he would have had trouble navigating the Supreme Court nomination process as it exists today with his feelings intact.

“I’m very tender,” he said.