Jackson: Amnesties in Strasbourg

Miles Jackson (Univ. of Oxford - Law) has posted Amnesties in Strasbourg. Here's the abstract:

This article concerns the permissibility of amnesties for torture under the ECHR. It argues that when an amnesty case comes to Strasbourg, as it likely will, there is a good chance that the Court will make a serious error. That error will be to hold that the Convention requires the prosecution of torture in all circumstances – it will be to invalidate the amnesty. In part, such an approach will be informed by an assumption that each of the set of duties that flows from an absolute right is itself absolute. That assumption, combined with the way that the Court has specified the duty to prosecute violations of Article 3, would prevent the Court from taking into account powerful countervailing interests in play during peace negotiations. These countervailing interests mean that any claim that amnesties for the gravest wrongs are always impermissible is unsustainable.