This chapter addresses the profound indebtedness of the Spanish Inquisition to its medieval predecessor. Both were grounded in the procedures and priorities of ancient Roman law. The text explains the concept of “heresy” within Christianity, as well as the ways in which medieval European rulers -- popes and monarchs -- worked together in an attempt to stamp out public, persistent, and intentional religious dissent. The essay charts the structural formation of the Spanish Inquisition after 1478, and examines the processes that were eventually standardized. It addresses questions of proof and legal discretion, as well as potential defense maneuvers by suspects. It raises the frequency of torture and describes more and less typical punishments, which Spanish inquisitors called “penances” in accordance with their overarching pastoral goals. Finally, this essay addresses the pivotal question of support for the Inquisition from below, namely, from ordinary Spaniards.

This chapter examines the obligations and responsibilities for protecting human rights and it does so by focusing mainly on ways in which states and other entities contribute to the violation of human rights standards. One of the major questions addressed here is whether the human rights obligations of states end at their territorial borders, or whether they also have extraterritorial obligations as well.

Freedom from torture or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment (’ill-treatment’) is one of the most fundamental rights. Underpinning the prohibition is a recognition of the centrality of bodily integrity and dignity to the human condition and as necessary preconditions for the enjoyment of other rights. This chapter considers the absolute prohibition on ill-treatment as provided for under the common law and in Article 3 ECHR. Noting the potential limitations in the scope of protection afforded by the common law, the focus of the chapter is Article 3 which, despite its succinctness, has been the source of a considerable body of jurisprudence. Of particular note is the ECtHR’s characterisation of torture as carrying a ’special stigma’ and the potential for this gloss to operate as a shield for States. The chapter examines the various State obligations imposed by Article 3, noting the scope of the procedural obligation to investigate and its application in domestic law via the HRA. Specific issues including extraordinary rendition, whole life sentences and domestic abuse are examined to illuminate the limitations and protective potential of the right to freedom from ill-treatment.

Chapter 4 explores the normative challenge of the experience of dehumanisation. It starts from a paradigmatic case of dehumanisation, as it was described from a first-person perspective: the torture of Jean Améry. This description offers a phenomenology of dehumanisation. In order to deepen the analysis, the experience of dehumanisation is subsequently confronted with recent work on alienation. This opens up the critical potential of the experience of dehumanisation challenging important concepts that figure prominently in debates on (the aftermath of) atrocities.

Chapter 3 is a close reading of several documents and transcripts of the Case of Duch of the Cambodia Tribunal. Interestingly, notions of humanity and inhumanity were used by several parties: prosecutors, attorneys for civil parties but also the defendant’s lawyer and Duch himself declared that the latter was dehumanised. In a second move, these findings will be put in a philosophical context by bringing them in conversation with the work of Hannah Arendt, thus showing the structure of dehumanisation and rehumanisation.

The imposition and execution of the death penalty are not per se violations of general international law and thus may amount to lawful sanctions in certain circumstances. This is so, even though the global trend towards the ending of capital punishment continues. As of August 2024, 53 States retained the death penalty for ordinary criminal offences. This chapter discusses the legality of capital punishment and its different forms. Certain categories of person may never be executed.

Outlawing all forms of ill-treatment can only be achieved by effective investigation and prosecution of the offenders. This chapter considers the duty to investigate both torture and other cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment or punishment. Where any ill-treatment is credibly alleged, a State is obligated by treaty and/or customary law to investigate. Where criminal wrongdoing amounting to torture or other ill-treatment is identified in the course of an impartial investigation, the perpetrators must be prosecuted and, if convicted at the end of a fair trial, duly punished. In practice, even when the crime is on the statute book in any given domestic legal regime and the various elements of the offence pertain to any individual, it is very rare for the specific charge of torture to be laid. More often, when a prosecution is mounted, for instance against a police officer or other law enforcement official alleged to have ill-treated a suspect, detainee, or other person, assault—not torture—is the charge on which the accused is indicted.

A victim is most obviously under the effective control of another where he or she has been formally deprived of liberty by the State and the perpetrator is a legal custodian. But a state of powerlessness may also arise in an extra-custodial law enforcement setting in certain circumstances. This chapter explores that dynamic, addressing the regulation of unlawful extra-custodial use of force by the police and other law enforcement officials, first as a manifestation of torture and then, in the more common alternative, as other proscribed ill-treatment.

The distinct prohibitions of torture and other forms of ill-treatment have crystallized as customary international law as the chapter discusses. In the specific case of torture, its prohibition is also a peremptory (jus cogens) norm of international law – a rule that is applicable in all circumstances and in any place. The chapter also discusses the geographical, material, personal, and temporal jurisdiction of the prohibitions of torture and other ill-treatment under international law more generally.

This chapter discusses the specifics of unlawful treatment of a detainee in peacetime; that is to say, outside the material jurisdiction of armed conflict. This concerns the conduct of any relevant law enforcement official, including a border force official or member of the security forces such as the gendarmerie, but is most commonly an issue involving the police or the prison service. First considered is the protection of persons in police custody. The protection of the 11.5 million people believed to be held in any form of prison across the world is then addressed. Separate sections are dedicated to incarcerated women and children, before a final section reviews some of the particular issues that arise in detention facilities managed by the private sector.

This chapter discusses how torture or other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment (‘other ill-treatment’) applies to the treatment of members of any armed force. Life in the military can be brutal even without a recruit ever facing the enemy in combat. Many armed forces or non-State armed groups have initiation rites that often involve degrading, and sometimes inhuman treatment. Once incorporated into any armed force (whether State or non-State), recruits may suffer intermittent or regular beatings at the hands of other soldiers or their commanders. This may be a form of sanction for poor performance but it may also be part and parcel of their existence in the military. Positions of authority in any armed force offer an opportunity to engage in gratuitous, unlawful violence – typically without the fear of ever being held accountable. Recruits—male as well as female—may be subjected to sexual violence or even raped. Children, who continue to be recruited into some armed forces and many non-State armed groups (often by force), are especially vulnerable to abuse and harm.

The prohibitions of torture and other ill-treatment in armed conflict under international humanitarian law largely reflect the prohibitions under human rights law, but there are also a number of important distinctions. Most obviously, the requirement for the involvement in some manner of a public official does not apply in the case of a non-State armed group that is party to a non-international armed conflict. But international criminal tribunals have also, on certain occasion, interpreted the prohibitions in a manner that does not accurately reflect international law. This chapter summarizes the classification of armed conflict under IHL. It then looks at how the two different classification of armed conflict (international and non-international) prohibit different forms of ill-treatment. The third main section of the chapter discusses the perpetration of these different forms of ill-treatment in selected conflicts going back to the start of the millennium, covering the conduct of Russia (in Ukraine), Syria (especially since 2012), Thailand (in the armed conflict in the south), and the United States (in particular at Guantánamo Bay since 2002).

Torture committed in the context of and in direct connection with any armed conflict is beyond doubt a war crime under customary international law. Torture that is committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against a civilian population within or outside armed conflict, with knowledge of the attack, is a crime against humanity. Torture is not explicitly an act of genocide when committed with the specific intent ‘to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such’. Nevertheless, in a landmark judgment, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda held torture formed part of the predicate offence of causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of one of the four protected groups.

Chapter 6 focuses on the men who were caught in the act of trying to start the intended rebellion. They were all free people of African descent, yet some among them also invited enslaved people to join the rebellion. Thus, relations between enslaved and free people are at the center of this chapter. The ways in which these people talked about freedom and bondage with one another presents a picture in which it is impossible to say that the conspiracy was definitively anti- or pro-slavery. There were some men who took abolition of slavery quite seriously, and there were others who had no interest in the matter whatsoever. Those who fit the latter group were connected to a shadowy group of elite white men who had been planning their own rebellion. Evidence of these white men’s participation in a conspiracy showed up frequently during a significant number of different men’s interrogations. The High Court chose to ignore or dismiss all such claims, clearing the way for them to transform the collective insurgencies of 1798 into a so-called Pardo conspiracy, free from confusion, free from uneven relations, and unconnected to the aims of elite white men.