Law and Torture

Erscheinungsjahr 2025
ISBN: 978-1-009-71945-2
Verlag: Cambridge University Press

Buch, Englisch, 244 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 510 g

Reihe: Law in Context

Contemporary understandings of torture are ruled by a medico-legal duopoly: the language of law (regulating definition and prohibition) and that of medicine (controlling understandings of the body in pain). This duopoly has left little space for contextual conceptualisation – of ideological, emotional and imaginational impulses which function in readily recognising some forms of violence and dismissing others. This book challenges the rigour of this prevailing duopoly. In its place, it develops a new approach to critique the central scripts of 'law and torture' scholarship (around progress, violence, evidence and senses). Drawing on socio-legal and critical-theoretical scholarship, it aims to 'widen the apertures' of the dominant dogmas to their interconnected social, political, temporal and emotional dimensions. These dimensions, the book advances, hold the key to more fully understanding not only the production of torture's definition and prohibition; but also its normative contestation – to better grasp whose pain gets recognised and redressed and why.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Cakal, Ergün

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface; 1. Introduction; 2. Doctrine and its (dis)contents; 3. Progressive impulses; 4. Exceptionalising suffering; 5. Substantiating suffering; 6. Sensing suffering; 7. Conclusion.

Über Autor(innen)

Cakal, Ergün
Ergün Cakal is a researcher at the University of Copenhagen's and formerly a legal advisor at the Danish Institute Against Torture (DIGNITY). He has worked as an anti-torture lawyer since 2016, focusing on conceptualisation, prevention and documentation of torture. He holds master's degrees in the sociology of law from Lund University and in international law from the University of Melbourne and a Ph.D. from the University of Copenhagen.