This chapter introduces the problems arising from the dominant approaches to ‘law and torture’ practice and research. It surveys the assumptions prevailing in the field and begins to question the ends that they serve. The chapter then provides an overview of the subsequent chapters.

Chapter 2 maps the contours of this doctrine, indicating the sources of the questions on which the critique builds. This chapter purposefully identifies doctrinal understandings (inclusions, exclusions, preponderances and assumptions), as focussed on definitions, distinctions, interpretation, contexts and conditions. In so doing, it maps the grounds for my broader claims as well as identifying entry points for their critique in subsequent chapters.

Through an interdisciplinary lens, this chapter provides an overview of the book and a detailed introduction to intellectual property (IP), exploring its conceptual, legal, and philosophical dimensions. Intellectual property, defined as non-physical property arising from cognitive and creative effort, contrasts with physical property. The chapter outlines the foundations of Anglo-American IP systems, encompassing copyright, patents, trade secrets, and trademarks, as well as the moral rights doctrine in continental European law. It highlights the role of IP in incentivizing innovation while addressing challenges posed by technological advancements, particularly artificial intelligence, and the proliferation of low-quality or misleading content.

Chapter 5 trains its attention on evidentiary practices, continuing to ask how law apprehends its world. The discussion reveals that legal actors have had a troubled relation with expert evidence. As with preceding chapters, a critical orientation is brought in to explicate law’s evidentiary reductivity (manageability of contingency and complexity) – to argue that the law has been unpredictable and unprincipled in how it has registered torture’s lifeworld. The pertinent questions here become: How does law interact with the natural and social sciences in the recognition of torture? What types of knowledge and evidence count towards legal recognition? What types are effaced and rendered inadmissible?

In this chapter, and setting aside various foundational moral entanglements, an argument will be offered for the protection of intellectual property based on individual self-interest and prudence. While consequences play a fundamental role, the argument and analysis discussed are not utilitarian in nature. In large part, this argument parallels considerations that arise in a prisoner’s dilemma game. A sketch of the salient features of prisoner’s dilemma games is provided along with an examination of how content creation, exclusion, and access can be modeled as a prisoner’s dilemma. In brief, allowing content to be unprotected in terms of free access will lead to a sub-optimal outcome where creation and innovation are suppressed. Finally, it will be argued that adopting the institutions of copyright, patent, and trade secret is one way we can avoid the sub-optimal results of playing an intellectual property prisoner’s dilemma.

Chapter 6 makes it clear that definitions, categories and expertise have not ended interpretive issues. Definitions are disembodied. All forms of violence and suffering, their definition and recognition remain relational in reality, born out of a labyrinthine complexity – in terms of how they are constructed, communicated, filtered and understood. Preconceptions of who is deserving of recognition, the requisites for social identification, moral commitment or collective empathy reveal this to be the case. Social science takes suffering to be (inescapably) intersubjectively, textually and sensorially understood – so judicial determinations must also go beyond the technical and doctrinal. The chapter’s discussion on temporality continues the theme of sensing. It examines temporal registers in the recognition of torture – exploring the questions: how does time feature and function in juridical understandings of torture? This discussion on time adds to the kaleidoscopic catalogue of sense-centric registers and reasoning operating in the anti-torture field – illustrating it to be a device of inclusion and exclusion.

In this chapter, a Lockean theory of intellectual property (IP) grounded in labor, desert, and a “no harm, no foul” rule is presented and defended. Building on Locke’s proviso that property claims are legitimate when acquisitions leave “enough and as good” for others, it is argued that intellectual works meet this condition by creating value without worsening others. By situating intellectual property within Locke’s broader framework of individual rights, it is argued that protections for authors and inventors are morally justified. Addressing key objections – including issues of baseline comparisons, the scope of rights, and challenges posed by independent creation – the theory is illustrated and refined. Also considered are the implications of adopting systems that allow perpetual IP rights. Lockean principles provide a robust moral foundation for systems of copyright, patent, and trade secret protection, ensuring respect for the natural rights of authors and inventors.

This chapter examines the moral foundations of personality-based justifications for intellectual property, emphasizing the alignment of intellectual works with individual autonomy and self-expression. Unlike utilitarian or labor-desert arguments, the personality-based approach views intellectual property as an extension of the creator’s personality, granting moral claims over divulgation, attribution, integrity, and withdrawal. A central wrong-making feature of violating the rights of attribution and integrity is that, in the typical case, a form of misrepresentation or fraud occurs. Additionally, it is argued that creators have a justified right to control downstream uses of their intellectual works, rooted in autonomy, free speech, and the prevention of misrepresentation or fraud. Along with considering various challenges, a contractarian framework is adopted that promotes legislative protections safeguarding the dignity, autonomy, and expressive freedoms of creators.