About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

4 Laws 1 (2015)

handle is hein.journals/laws4 and id is 1 raw text is: Laws 2015, 4, 1-15; doi:10.3390/laws4010001 laws ISSN 2075-471X www.mdpi.com/journal/laws/ Review The Study of Torture: Why It Persists, Why Perceptions of It are Malleable, and Why It is Difficult to Eradicate Erin M. Kearns Department of Justice, Law and Criminology, American University, 4400 Massachusetts Avenue, Washington, DC 20016, USA; E-Mail: erin.keams@american.edu; Tel.: +1-202-885-2168 Academic Editor: Jason Mazzone Received: 15 September 2014 Accepted 16 December 2014 Published 25 December 2014 Abstract: Why does torture persist despite its prohibition? Scholars, policymakers, and the public have heavily debated this topic in the past decade. Yet, many puzzles remain about the practice of torture. Scholarship on torture spans academic disciplines, which adds diversity in perspectives brought to these questions but also can lead to redundancy and stunted progress in research on the issue as a whole. This article assesses the state of the multidisciplinary literature on torture in counterterrorism with specific focus on why democracies torture despite prohibiting it, how public perception of torture is malleable, and why so few countries are able to move from commitment to compliance in the prohibition of torture. In each section, the article also identifies underexplored areas in the research and suggests avenues for future investigation. Keywords: torture; counterterrorism; terrorism; human rights 1. Introduction Prior to 9/11 and the war on terror, Americans generally associated the term torture with atrocities that either happened in the past or occurred in distant lands. Torture evoked images of punishment in the Middle Ages, the Holocaust, the wars in Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and the systematic sexual violence that is rampant in conflicts around the globe. For some Americans, torture also may have evoked grisly images from our own past, such as the Salem Witch Trials, slavery, lynching, and the torture scandals in domestic police departments and prisons. Few, however, would have thought that torture occurred in the present day at the hands of most governments-including democracies-around the world. The images of Abu Ghraib, which surfaced in April 2004, likely

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most