Torture with consent

Polity, 2010

Despite being the subject of much recent scholarly work, torture remains an ambiguous concept. As recent legal arguments have made clear, such vagueness has important and immediate political consequences. This article makes a number of contributions towards resolving this ambiguity. First, it argues that the distinction between physical and psychological abuse is unwarranted. Second, it puts forward a logical basis for the distinction between torture and legally permissible punishments like incarceration. Third, it distinguishes between torture and related concepts like cruelty or sadism by stressing the instrumentality of torture. Ultimately, torture is defined as the systematic and deliberate infliction of severe pain or suffering on a person over whom the actor has physical control, in order to induce a behavioral response from that person.

The term torture is a generic concept and can be defined, debated and deliberated under various conditions, in diverse contexts and claims. There is no consensus among the scholars, practitioners about the meaning of the term. It has been used as an investigative technique inflicted on a third person for the purpose of extracting information or confession. According to the United Nations Convention on 10 December 1984, Torture means any kind of act which causes severe pain or sufferings whether physical or mental and is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes obtaining information or a confession. This definition does not include " pain or suffering arising only from inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions. Torture has been used less against citizens, however, more often against the people who are not the members of society like slaves, foreigners, prisoners of war and members of racial, ethnic and religious outsider groups. However, in the twentieth century, the rises of liberal democratic states have caused a decrease in the practice of state torture against citizens. Increase in torture can be attributed to three developments in the Twentieth century. This paper highlights the use of torture in a democratic country like India.

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000

Human Rights Brief 14(2), 2007

Criminal Law and Philosophy, 2015

Uwe Steinhoff (2013) defends the moral and legal permissibility of torture in a limited range of circumstances. This article criticizes Steinhoff's arguments. The analogy between ordinary defensive violence and defensive torture which Steinhoff argues for is partly spoiled by the presence, within defensive torture, of opportunistic harm, in addition to eliminative harm. Steinhoff's arguments that the mere legalization of defensive torture would not metastasize into a more full-fledged institutionalization of torture are also found wanting. As a minimal form of institutionalization, the mere legalization of torture would already be at risk of further entrenchment and growth.

International Journal of Applied Philosophy, 2015

2012

The infamous memos that concluded that torture only existed where there was infliction of pain equivalent in intensity to the pain "associated with a suffiiently serious physical condition or injury such as death, organ failure, or serious impairment of body functions" also concluded that "a defendant [must] act with the peciflc intent to inflict severe pain." Specjically, "the infliction of such pain must be the defendant's predse objective." Although this interpretation of the intent requirement has been definitively repudiatedand rightly sothere has thus far been little attention paid to the level of intent that is required to prove torture under domestic and international law. This Article aims to bring clarity to this contested and misunderstood element of the legal definition of torture. We demonstrate that torture is a specic intent crime under U.S. law and international law. As we shall show, moreover, the veg definition of torture in the Convention Against Torture supplies the additional mens rea requirement that renders the crime one of specic intent: The accused must not only inflict pain and suffering, but he must do so for a pupose prohibited by the Convention (for example, to extract a confession). We show that U.S. courts and international courts and tribunals have consistently applied this understanding of the specific intent standard for torture. In doing so, they have not required direct evidence of mental state, but have instead inferred intent from facts and circumstances that demonstrate knowing infliction ofpain or suffering for a prohibited pupose. We hope that this conclusion will help guide U.S. practice in filling the dangerous analytical void left by the repudiated memos.

Peace Review, 2006

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