John Parry's book is a useful addition to the burgeoning new field of studies on torture. Parry focuses on three important and interconnected aspects of torture: the ambiguous legal regimes that seek to exclude torture as a legitimate option for state policy, the connection of torture to the construction of modern liberal ideas of citizenship, and the persistent and unjustified attribution of torture as a feature of authoritarian states alone. His contributions concerning these subjects vary in their originality but never falter in delivering plausible arguments supported by exhaustive research. I remain unconvinced by some of Parry's conclusions for reasons I will give later, but first I need to give his arguments the close review they deserve.

Parry begins his consideration of the problem of torture by modern states and, particularly, by democracies by concentrating on the legal position of torture as a practice. This might immediately strike some readers of this review as superfluous—obviously, torture has been defined out of the policy options of modern states by extensive legal prohibitions at both the national and international level. States still torture, of course, but that only illustrates their basic lawlessness and, indeed, barbarism. Demythologizing this strain of thought has been a major emphasis of the new scholarship on torture, but here Parry has an advantage that shows clearly in this book. He subjects the entire body of law on torture to the kind of searching examination that only a sharp and skeptical attorney at the top of his or her game can provide. The results are startling and informative.

As Parry points out, the legal strictures on torture in international, European, and US law are actually quite equivocal. Riven through with contradictory doctrine, often bent and twisted to accommodate executive discretion, and plagued by definitional ambiguities, international and continental conventions have made the complete nonderogation of torture difficult. The author identifies several difficulties.

First, the definitional problems in the various conventions and the weak enforcement mechanisms they use have led to a legally vague separation of torture from “cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment” (p. 40). This problem can be illustrated by his comparison of the treatment of cruel, inhuman, and degrading behavior by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and by the United Nations Convention on Torture (Convention). The ICCPR bans both torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading behavior outright, but fails to clearly define the difference between the two practices. The Convention attempts to address this problem by a more complete definition of torture, but in the process creates a loophole by excluding “pain or suffering arising only from … lawful sanctions” (p. 34, quoting the Convention). Also, the Convention, unlike the ICCPR, does not ban cruel, inhuman, and degrading behavior, but instead calls on the parties to prevent it by domestic law. As Parry points out, the Convention “appears deliberately crafted to leave room for states to engage in coercive treatment in compelling circumstances, so long as the conduct is not ‘torture’” (p. 37). As might be expected, the actual jurisprudence of the Committee against Torture, the Convention's investigative arm, has yet to make findings extending the definition of torture to instances of cruel, inhuman, or degrading behavior.

Second, states have employed these definitional ambiguities to provide legal cover for their use of tortuous interrogations. Chapter 3 of the book illustrates the extent to which the various “reservations, understandings, and declarations (RUDs)” (p. 55) that had accompanied the initial ratification of the Convention made its application to US law problematic and the actual banned practices difficult to identify. The US judicial system, already committed to widespread use of balancing tests to determine the scope of state power, has responded with deference to executive initiatives based in part on the lack of a bright-line rule controlling the boundaries of state violence. It is not surprising that the very existence of torture could be plausibly denied under the circumstances, and the use of tortuous interrogations in the War on Terror defended, as necessary for protecting national security and justified by the debased cruelty of the terrorists.

The next object of Parry's study fits well with the ambiguities he highlights in the law. As he points out, the very fabric of modern citizenship is bound by rights—strictures on when the state can use violence to enforce commands. It is the framework of rights that defines both the scope of state action and the identification of immunities to it; indeed, it goes a long way toward defining citizenship itself. The persistent diminution of the basic humanity of “others” plays into the creation of a cultural space that legal vagaries can allow torture to occupy. Here, Parry warns us, correctly, that the sometimes ludicrous, sometimes sinister emergence of public debate concerning what constitutes torture and when it can be justified has the possibility of transforming the way we think about the regulation of state violence in ways we cannot anticipate and probably will not like.

Finally, in his last chapters, Parry comes to a consideration of the actual use of torture by states, focusing especially on democracies. This is, for me, the most controversial part of his book. Most of Chapters 5 and 6 is a capable digest of earlier work, most particularly of Darius Rejali's magisterial Torture and Democracy (2007). If I had to tell anyone where to find a useful short history of the use of torture by democracies, I would refer them to this part of his book. Parry's discussion of the use of torture by the United States during the War on Terror, however, left me uncertain of his argument. Research indicates that he is correct in identifying torture as part of a continuum of violence exercised by all states, regardless of regime, and that legal loopholes have made its use more common than most of us think. However, I believe that the author is shortchanging the causal mechanism for establishing torture in democracies by saying that the identification of “others” and legal ambiguities are enough. Why would the Bush administration go through the complex maneuverings to legally justify tortuous interrogations described in Chapter 7 if that was all it took? I think the answer is that while gratuitous torture by democratic governments does occur during war and, at times, peace, establishing torture as a legal option, even when democracies are under threat, is constrained by the possible costs to elected governments that attempt to do it. Further, recent work on the factors influencing democratic regimes to back down from torture supports this stronger role for legal and political institutions as constraints (Courtney Conrad and Will Moore, “What Stops the Torture?” American Journal of Political Science 54 [2010]: 459–76).

Overall, I can recommend this book unreservedly. Parry's legal expertise and indefatigable research efforts (his bibliography is almost worth the price of the book on its own) make Understanding Torture an excellent addition to the now-bulging torture bookshelf. His work is most useful at uncovering the difficulties with legally regulated torture, has interesting things to say about the character of modern citizenship, and provides an excellent short history of torture by democracies. My only reservation is that I think the causal mechanisms establishing torture in democracies may be more complex then Parry asserts. Overall, I learned a good deal and believe that both scholars and students would have the same experience.