Assessing (and Making Sense of) Severity: Conceptualising and Contextualising Torture’s Core
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Assessing (and Making Sense of) Severity : Conceptualising and Contextualising Torture’s Core. / Cakal, Ergun.
In: Nordic Journal of International Law, Vol. 91, No. 2, 2022, p. 284-309.Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Assessing (and Making Sense of) Severity
T2 - Conceptualising and Contextualising Torture’s Core
AU - Cakal, Ergun
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - The element of severity remains core to the definition and interpretation of torture under international law. It has long represented a source of confusion and obfuscation for the legally-oriented anti-torture professional, whether academic, advocate or adjudicator. Its character as decisive differentiator, setting torture apart from cruelty, inhumanity and degradation, remains problematically entrenched and contested. It is a legal construct not finding its origins in the scholarship on pain, and evades precise measurement – as pain is socio-culturally constructed, relative and subjective. Accepting the prevailing complexity and addressing the perennial ambiguity, this article aims to offer some clarifications towards conceptualising and contextualising, and thereby better specifying and applying, torture’s core.
AB - The element of severity remains core to the definition and interpretation of torture under international law. It has long represented a source of confusion and obfuscation for the legally-oriented anti-torture professional, whether academic, advocate or adjudicator. Its character as decisive differentiator, setting torture apart from cruelty, inhumanity and degradation, remains problematically entrenched and contested. It is a legal construct not finding its origins in the scholarship on pain, and evades precise measurement – as pain is socio-culturally constructed, relative and subjective. Accepting the prevailing complexity and addressing the perennial ambiguity, this article aims to offer some clarifications towards conceptualising and contextualising, and thereby better specifying and applying, torture’s core.
U2 - 10.1163/15718107-91020003
DO - 10.1163/15718107-91020003
M3 - Journal article
VL - 91
SP - 284
EP - 309
JO - Nordic Journal of International Law
JF - Nordic Journal of International Law
SN - 0902-7351
IS - 2
ER -
ID: 285261742