Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Human rights are the subject of enduring interest, engagement and controversy both in the academic and public domain. Absolute human rights provoke such interest and controversy even more intensely. This book critically engages with the concept of absolute rights, and examines how the absolute character of the right enshrined in Article 3 of the ECHR, which provides that no one shall be subjected to torture or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, informs the interpretation of the right. The book offers a persuasive theoretical framework for delimiting absolute rights in a way which remains faithful to their absolute nature. It counters broad-brush accounts of the delimitation of absolute rights and provides a nuanced account of the foundations, challenges, and pathways to such delimitation. Concretising these starting points, the book undertakes a rigorous and theoretically engaged legal analysis of the character and substantive scope of Article 3 of the ECHR in light of this framework. The book therefore serves as a theoretical and doctrinal study of a fundamental - but contested - area of human rights law.
Synopsis
This book theorises and concretises the idea of 'absolute rights' in human rights law with a focus on Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). It unpacks how we might understand what an 'absolute right' in human rights law is and draws out how such a right's delimitation may remain faithful to its absolute character. Concretising these starting points, it considers how, as a matter of principle, the right not to be subjected to torture or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment enshrined in Article 3 ECHR is and ought to be substantively delimited by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). Focusing on the wrongs at issue, this analysis touches both on the core of the right and on what some might consider to lie at the right's 'fringes': from the aggravated wrong of torture, to the severity assessment delineating inhumanity and degradation; the justified use of force and its implications for absoluteness; the delimitation of positive obligations to protect from ill-treatment; and the duty not to expel persons to places where they face a real risk of torture, inhumanity or degradation.
Few legal standards carry the simultaneous significance and contestation surrounding this right. This book seeks to contribute fruitfully to efforts to counter a proliferation of attempts to dispute, circumvent or dilute the absolute character of the right not to be subjected to torture or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, and offer the groundwork for transparently and coherently (re)interpreting the right's contours in line with its absolute character.