Enforcing International Law through Domestic Law: Torture Criminalization

• In Event: Empirical Contributions to the Study of Torture

Abstract

One of the primary mechanisms through which international human rights law (IHRL) is designed to be enforced is the formal incorporation of international legal norms into domestic law. Yet such “legislative internalization” has received little attention in studies that aim assess the effectiveness of IHRL, which tend to focus solely on the effects of treaty ratification. This paper examines the 1984 Convention against Torture and one primary way it is meant to be internalized into domestic law: the criminalization of torture. Using a new, original dataset on the global spread of criminal laws against torture, this paper assesses whether criminalization in democratic and semi-democratic states 1) reduces the frequency of torture by police, and 2) increases the likelihood that allegations of police torture are prosecuted. Despite widespread skepticism among scholars to the contrary, I find that formal law can help facilitate improvements in rights, though the mechanisms through which they do so remain unclear. These findings point to the need to investigate the relationship between law and practice more deeply, specifically how criminalization creates new bases for mobilization and oversight around human rights violations.

Author

• Mark S. Berlin, Marquette University