Torture Legal Definition:

The intentional infliction of pain or suffering on an animal or a person and as for the latter, even if for the purpose of obtaining information such as a confession or the names of accomplices, or as a punishment for crime.

Related Terms: Waterboarding , Cruel and Unusual Punishment

In A(FC), Justice Bingham of the English House of Lords wrote:

"[F]rom its very earliest days the common law of England set its face firmly against the use of torture.... One of the first acts of the Long Parliament in 1640 was, accordingly, to abolish the Court of Star Chamber, where torture evidence had been received, and in that year the last torture warrant in our history was issued.

"In rejecting the use of torture, whether applied to potential defendants or potential witnesses, the common law was moved by the cruelty of the practice as applied to those not convicted of crime, by the inherent unreliability of confessions or evidence so procured and by the belief that it degraded all those who lent themselves to the practice. This rejection was contrasted with the practice prevalent in the states of continental Europe who, seeking to discharge the strict standards of proof required by the Roman-canon models they had adopted, came routinely to rely on confessions procured by the infliction of torture.

The 1985 United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment defines torture as:



Torture can be distinguished from “inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment”. Section 3 of the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights states (emphasis added):


In Saadi v Italy (2008), the defendant, a terrorism suspect, was facing deportation and alleged torture should he be deported back to Tunisia. The Court said:

“According to the Court's settled case-law, ill-treatment must attain a minimum level of severity if it is to fall within the scope of §3 (of the European Convention on Human Rights). The assessment of this minimum level of severity is relative; it depends on all the circumstances of the case, such as the duration of the treatment, its physical and mental effects and, in some cases, the sex, age and state of health of the victim.

“In order for a punishment or treatment associated with it to be ‘inhuman’ or ‘degrading’, the suffering or humiliation involved must in any event go beyond that inevitable element of suffering or humiliation connected with a given form of legitimate treatment or punishment.

“In order to determine whether any particular form of ill-treatment should be qualified as torture, regard must be had to the distinction drawn in §3 between this notion and that of inhuman or degrading treatment. This distinction would appear to have been embodied in the Convention to allow the special stigma of torture to attach only to deliberate inhuman treatment causing very serious and cruel suffering.”

Pirate lawThe treaty constituting the International Criminal Court defines the word differently, and in the context of crimes against humanity:


In his 1897 edition of the American Law Dictionary, jurist John Bouvier calls torture an “absurd and cruel practice” and defines it as a:

“... mode of examination by violence to the other person, to extort a confession from supposed criminals, and a revelation of their associates.”

In 1535, torture was the statute-mandated method of interrogating pirates so they would “confess their offence, which they will never do without torture....” (extract pictured above).


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