Chapter 4 delves deeper into the discussion around the torturous suffering inflicted in the name of the state and how that is legitimated. This chapter continues to find states to exhibit an existential interest in keeping the legality of some forms of suffering ambiguous and thus deniable (and non-justiciable to the extent possible), given the degree to which state authorities rely on them. Certain methods (solitary confinement, coercive interrogation and life imprisonment) have come to be bracketed away from the prohibition. This evokes the (often effaced) question of the formation of legality and legitimacy of state violence and brings into focus legal concepts, such as ‘lawful sanctions’, ‘minimum severity’, ‘inherent or incidental’, ‘discomfort’, ‘special stigma’, ‘triviality’ and ‘necessity’. These stand to be critiqued as being born out of political imperatives to exceptionalise so as to invisibilise and render deniable certain state practices. These categories, as will be argued, have worked to preserve the category of torture as aberrational and nearly unattainable.