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That international law progressively recognises and prohibits emergent forms of torture and related ill-treatment has become widely accepted in the anti-torture discourse. The premise that torture's techniques and contexts change is taken to shape juridical recognition, representation and response. Authoritative international treaties, such as the UN Convention Against Torture , the European Convention on Human Rights and the Inter-American Convention to Prevent and Punish Torture , are therefore deemed 'living instruments' – influenced by social and scientific change as channelled through the doctrine of dynamic interpretation. This article argues, however, that these premises are not sufficiently empirically grounded and, far from faithfully reflecting social and scientific changes, invoke critiques around the ideological and epistemological registers of advocates and adjudicators. Taking scholarship on dynamic interpretation and forms of state violence which do not leave overt physical marks as paradigmatic entry points, this article problematises torture's juridical conceptualisation and contextualisation through a critical theoretical lens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates how the concept of 'conscience' emerged as a battleground within the French Catholic Church and as a politicized concept with implications for ideas about human rights. State-sponsored torture during the Algerian War (1954–62) prompted dissident Christians to pioneer the use of 'individual conscience' as a tool of resistance. The Christians of the anti-torture movement embraced the theologically informed language of conscience alongside a French, secular tradition of rights drawn from the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. The way that Catholic dissidents thought about rights transcended the secular–religious divide; while recognizing a liberal concept of rights coming out of the French Revolution, these Catholics also insisted upon the spiritual function of individual conscience as a check upon the state. Intra-Catholic debates about conscience thus reveal the political and theological diversity within mid-twentieth-century Christianity, long assumed to have been dominated by actors on the political right, as well as the multiplicity of coexisting ways of speaking about and interpreting human rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with the Roman inquisition in Malta during the eighteenth century when much of its severity had declined. It presents evidence from primary sources in Malta's inquisitorial archives to document unique aspects of the Maltese tribunal and, in the process, demolishes various myths about this institution. It proves that most of the charges resulted from self-confessions and that the accused would be arrested only after a prolonged investigation. Though he was not supplied with the names of his accusers these did crop up during interrogation. They were also to be found in the transcript that a defendant was given to prepare his defense with and he was even able to confront his accusers face to face. The defendant was permitted to have a lawyer to assist him and could bring his own witnesses. Judicial torture was rarely used and sentences were decided with much circumspection so that the innocent would not be punished. It is morally incorrect to condemn liberty of conscience but it must be said that the Roman inquisition followed the rule of law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A correction to the article "The Christian Anti-Torture Movement and the Politics of Conscience in France" is presented.

The article focuses on history of judicial torture in Europe and mentions topics such as capital crime and severe punishments.

This article sketches the history of the mediation of linguistic difference in the context of judicial torture in early modern France. It argues that language represented an important dimension of what took place in the torture chambers of early modern Europe. Embedded within multilingual societies and habitually confronted with linguistic difference, tribunals developed an array of mediation practices. Shaped by officials' scribal and linguistic practices and their infliction of pain in order to establish judicial facts, their linguistic choices also shed light on how jurists conceived of and set out uncovering the truth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses official and unofficial perspectives of torture in the Ming and Qing dynasties of China. Topics discussed include the difference between torture and torment, the practice of torture according to late imperial Chinese law being legal only when it was applied as part of a legal proceeding by a judicial official, and handbooks written to shed light on the role of torture in the judicial process.

The article focuses on the accountability for physician participation in torture and of medical associations; and torturing with impunity with reference to World War II.

This essay examines writing about and representations of pain and torture by looking specifically at two French Catholic martyr plays that appeared at the turn of the seventeenth century: Nicolas Soret's La Céciliade (1606) and Jean Boissin de Gallardon's Le Martyre de saincte Catherine (1618). It interprets these plays alongside Antonio Gallonio's Trattato degli instrumenti di martiro (1591; 1594) and Richard Verstegan's Théâtre des cruautez des Herectiques de nostre temps (1587; 1607). On the one hand, by analysing the representations of physical torture, this article investigates the relationship between religious violence in the real world and the significance of the martyr figure on stage in La Céciliade. On the other, it takes into account the crushing of the executioners' bodies in Boissin's play and in iconographical representations of St Catherine's wheel of torture, arguing that representations of the martyrs' and pagans' injured bodies not only serve to profess publicly the truth of the Catholic faith but also act as vehicles for the Catholic Church's politicization of martyrdom and conversion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the nature of the global war on terrorism and the challenge for humanitarian protection posed by the issue of unlawful enemy combatants. Topics discussed include the controversy over anti-terrorism strategies applied by the U.S. in Afghanistan and Pakistan and the problem associated with torture and rendition of suspected terrorists. Also discussed are loopholes in the Geneva Conventions concerning the protection of detained persons.

The article presents a report on a conference on the history of laws regarding people with disabilities, held in Bremen, Germany, from January 31-February 1, 2014. Topics of discussion included medical care of prisoners in the late Middle Ages, torture in early modern witchcraft trials, and disabilities in canon law.

Donald Card (1928–) is a former policeman in South Africa who became the subject of international media attention on 21 September 2004. In a highly publicised and symbolic ceremony of reconciliation inaugurating the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory Project, he handed back to Mandela two notebooks containing 78 hitherto unknown letters written by Mandela on Robben Island. A starkly contrasting image of Card as a torturer had, however, come to light during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) hearings in the Eastern Cape in 1996 and 1997. This article begins by making a case for a direct connection between these two events. We argue that the sanitised version of his life history in recent scholarship traces back to his own attempts to defend his reputation from these allegations of torture and that the Mandela notebooks served both to obscure these allegations and provide Card with a respectable, even heroic, biography. We then present our alternative version of his life history. Drawing on Robert Morrell's periodisation of masculinities in southern Africa, we read the story of Card's life in early–mid-twentieth century South Africa in terms of changing masculine identities, each strongly associated with violence: first the ‘oppositional’ masculinity of a child growing up in an abusive patriarchal Irish settler family, second the ‘settler’ masculinity of an athletic teenager at a white school in the former Transkei, and third his ‘hegemonic’ white South African masculine identity defined in opposition to emergent black masculinities into which he was initiated as a young adult during four months of intensive training at a police college in Pretoria. It is in this context, along with extensive new independently acquired oral and documentary evidence of his human rights abuses in East London in the 1950s and the early 1960s, that we situate the TRC testimonies about Card's torture between 1962 and 1964. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents the history of the White House Torture Memos in the U.S. It says that it starts after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, in which Vice President Dick Chenney's Chief Counsel David Addington, Chief Counsel of the Department of Defense Jim Haynes, White House Chief Counsel Alberto Gonzales, and John Yoo, deputy head of the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), change dlaw procedures. They also alter the Geneva Conventions warfare conduct.

This article focuses on the use of judicial torture against the native populations in Nueva España, which later became Latin America, during the 17th century. It examines three specific cases related to judicial torture that appeared in the courts of Mixteca Alta in Mexico. The author analyzes the judicial archives in the Teposcolula District in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. She also studies the relationship between the Indian courts of first instance and the observance of Castilian law related to judicial torture.

The article presents a short history and legislative issues of torture ban in Great Britain. It attempts to provide a definition of torture as an act that inflicts severe pain or suffering for the purposes of information or punishment in a broad definition. Professor John Langbein described the period between 1540 and 1640 as the century of torture. Various sources then clarify prohibitions on torture, saying that torture was no longer warranted in England after 1640, out rightly prohibited in the 18th and 19th century and reemerged in the 20th century. It also indicates that the September 11 terrorist attacks have given it renewed attention, referring to the mistreatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

Discusses torture. Origin of torture; Long tradition of torture; History of medical involvement in torture; How medical involvement in torture and methods of torture have changed in the 20th century.

In their article Alison and Alison (2017) argue that historical experiences speak against the efficacy of torture. In this comment experiences from the witch persecutions in Europe during the 15th to 17th centuries that support this notion are discussed. Converging data suggests that torture was often instrumental in making large numbers of suspects confess to flying children through the air to nocturnal satanic meetings, during this period. A comparison of the number of false self incriminating confessions given during the Swedish witch trial in the parish of Rättvik 1671 (before royal sanction of torture was given) and the parish of Ockelbo 1675 (after royal sanction of torture was given) is used to illustrate this point. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented which focuses on an article on South African police official Donald Card and allegations that he committed torture, as well as a response article from Card.

The article reviews the web site "The Torture Archive," located at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/torture_archive/index.htm, part of the National Security Archive at George Washington University.