Dignity, Degrading Treatment, Torture & the Role of Human Rights Law(yers)

Wednesday 8th May 2019, 3.00-6.00pm

Free registration required

This roundtable event marks a year since the publication of Webster (2018), Dignity, Degrading Treatment and Torture in Human Rights Law: The Ends of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

(Routledge Research in Human Rights Law Series) and explores broad themes stemming from the book.

The book’s starting point is that the category of degrading treatment is an underexplored yet crucial site of analysis for understanding the parameters of the prohibition of torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment in international human rights law. It proposes an interpretive methodology for arriving at a conceptual account of degrading treatment, and provides an analysis which draws upon frameworks of legal interpretation, philosophical approaches to the idea of human dignity, and insights from social philosophy and social psychology alongside systematic case-law analysis.

Dr Elaine Webster will give an overview of the book’s approach, its interpretation of degrading treatment within the prohibition of torture, and outline some of its key findings.

Three invited discussants will focus on themes stemming from the book: Professor Francesca Klug OBE, Visiting Professor at LSE, Professor Jill Marshall from Royal Holloway London, and Professor Toby Kelly from the School of Social and Political Science at Edinburgh.

Further details and registration are available here.