Open research questions in Torture, Ethics, and Law
28 unresolved questions extracted from the limitations and future-work sections of 1,453 Torture, Ethics, and Law papers in our library. Each links back to the study that raised it.
What the literature leaves open
A limitation of this study is certainly the delayed evalu- ation of the victims, which prevents a reliable assessment of the causal relationship and compatibility between the reported history and the observed injuries. Forensic medical experts performing this type of assess- ment must always proceed with extreme caution and atten- tion, being already aware, prior to examining the victim, of the anamnestic and objective elements that need to be investigated.
Torture in custody, a case series that highlight typical patterns of injuries and behaviors · 2026 · DOII finally argue against the position that the capacity for autonomous choice is lacking in inmates by disentangling the particular features of the prison-setting and show that the context of incarceration is not so substantially different from regular cases of suicide assistance that it warrants a difference in treatment.
A host of people, including tutors, governesses, and babysitters claim the right, but “how far the right to corporal punishment is transferrable is entirely an open question!” Curiously, von Oertzen asserted both that there was an objectively existing “right” to use corporal punishment and that there was no consensus on where that right lay.
This paper seeks to address both gaps in the literature by leveraging the use of experiments embedded in a pair of US national surveys to examine the impact of international law and military experience on individual attitudes toward torture.
The majority of these survivors lives in third world countries where locally funded rehabilitation services are minimal or non-existent, and most of the specialised rehabilitation centres for torture victims are non-governmental organisations (NGOs) who are totally dependent on foreign donors After a quarter of a century and impressive expansion of rehabilitation efforts worldwide, there is still no consensus about the efficacy of treatment interventions for torture survivors.
The conviction for rape was reversed on appeal on grounds of insufficient evidence of the personal involvement of the accused in the rape: Musema v Prosecutor (Judgment), November 16, 2001 (ICTR Appeals Chamber).
To solve this apparent conflict between the stand taken by the relevant human-rights monitoring bodies and international criminal law, the author maintains that the defence of necessity is not available in the case of acts of interrogational torture because, in the circumstances under discussion (also called 'the ticking-bomb situation'), two requisite elements of necessity are lacking.
May Necessity Be Available as a Defence for Torture in the Interrogation of Suspected Terrorists? · 2004 · DOI11 Whether they would authorize preventive detention of someone like David, who may not exhibit the type of inability to control that is popularly associated with sex offenders, remains an open question, and pure preventive detention of someone like Moussaoui is undoubtedly not authorized by the Court's case law to date.
A Jurisprudence of Dangerousness · 2003The primary goal in this paper is to: (1) unravel a series of issues regarding the death penalty; (2) made an argument into way the death penalty should be examined by the totality of its outcomes; and (3) explore which outcomes should be analyzed more carefully, and be a more explicit and better documented part of capital punishment discussion.
The existing literature is predominantly normative and legal; clinical and qualitative evidence on harm is sparse. Gender, race, and other axes of inequality remain insufficiently theorised in the literature on digital authoritarianism.
However, despite acknowledging the identity-rooted relationship between threat and out-group hostility, the possible relationship between identity attachment and attitudes towards torture has been under-explored.
Because of the difficulties in researching torturers, little is known about how they are recruited, trained, and authorized, and how they morally justify their actions.
This article fills in a gap in the literature surrounding Yoo’s culpability by straightforwardly delineating the prima facie case against John Yoo under the Rome Statute.
No Home in this World: The Case against John Yoo before the International Criminal Court · 2020 · DOIThis case highlights the importance of investigating deaths even in unidentified bodies and the different presentations of fatal consequences of a body packer, which previously have not been described in literature.
Unexpected deadly outcome of a body packer – a case of drowning and illegal drug trafficking with review · 2019 · DOIBecause of this, we have not yet established many empirical facts about the relationship between domestic institutions and violence unrelated to the repression of dissent.
Examining repressive and oppressive state violence using the Ill-Treatment and Torture data · 2019 · DOIeffort to introduce democracy with an indeterminate rule of law produced unintended and inconsistent results in the normative judgments of Iraqi judges.
(5) Yet it remains to be explained why the criminal law should be so stringent with killing or injuring another at his request, when it is so permissive with direct self-injury.
In the case of Abu Ghraib, the spectacle of the same set of photographs shown repeatedly kept the focus on individual perpetrators and the morality of their behaviour, creating a narrative limited to the actions of a few individuals.
2 This justification suggests that murderers should be executed for retributive reasons: murderers should suffer, and the retributive effects of life imprisonment are insufficient for taking a life.
Even though the case descriptions were rather sparse, the raters showed a surprisingly high degree of agree- ment in their assessments of the boys.
Unfortunately her study is inconclusive be cause she did not investigate the background fac tors in a control group of men who decided to be repatriated.
Most-cited papers in Torture, Ethics, and Law
- Deviant or wrong? The effects of norm information on the efficacy of punishment · Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization · 2021 · 68 citations
- Confidence in the death penalty and support for its use: Exploring the value-expressive dimension of death penalty attitudes · Justice Quarterly · 2004 · 45 citations
- Citizens' Perceptions of Human Rights Practices: An Analysis of 55 Countries · Journal of Peace Research · 2007 · 43 citations
- Africa, Prisons and COVID-19 · Journal of Human Rights Practice · 2020 · 40 citations
- Martial Law? Military Experience, International Law, and Support for Torture · International Studies Quarterly · 2013 · 37 citations
- Deterrence and the Death Penalty: The Views of the Experts · The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology (1973-) · 1996 · 34 citations
- Punishment and its putative fallout: A reappraisal · Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior · 2020 · 30 citations
- Naming and shaming, government messaging, and backlash effects: Experimental evidence from the Convention Against Torture · Journal of Human Rights · 2022 · 27 citations
- ‘The prison of the body’: school uniforms between discipline and governmentality · Discourse Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education · 2021 · 26 citations
- How Law Rules: Torture, Terror, and the Normative Judgments of Iraqi Judges · Law & Society Review · 2008 · 23 citations
Most recent work
- Torture in custody, a case series that highlight typical patterns of injuries and behaviors · Forensic Science, Medicine and Pathology · 2026
- “They Align Themselves With Us, Whereas I'm Aligned With the Patient”: A Multi‐Site Qualitative Study of Resident Physicians' Experiences With Law Enforcement in the Emergency Department · AEM Education and Training · 2026
- Coercion without contact: New technologies and the boundaries of torture · Torture Journal · 2026
- Revising Federal Drug Sentencing Guidelines to Better Match Sanctions to Harms · Federal Sentencing Reporter · 2026
- Engaging Community to Identify Patient-Centered Lethal Means Safety Outcomes for Youth · Pediatrics · 2026
- Analyzing Perceptions of Custodial Torture Among Police Officers and the Public in India · 2026
- Women have the right to health care in prison. This should extend to freezing their eggs · 2026
- Prisons Must Go · The Journal of Psychodrama Sociometry and Group Psychotherapy · 2026
- When the Death Penalty Is Not an Option: Procedural and Linguistic Strategies in Sentencing Palestinian Defendants in Military Courts’ Terrorism Cases · Criminal Justice Ethics · 2026
- Review of A Fearful Innocence · Communal Societies · 2026
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