Freedom from torture or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment (’ill-treatment’) is one of the most fundamental rights. Underpinning the prohibition is a recognition of the centrality of bodily integrity and dignity to the human condition and as necessary preconditions for the enjoyment of other rights. This chapter considers the absolute prohibition on ill-treatment as provided for under the common law and in Article 3 ECHR. Noting the potential limitations in the scope of protection afforded by the common law, the focus of the chapter is Article 3 which, despite its succinctness, has been the source of a considerable body of jurisprudence. Of particular note is the ECtHR’s characterisation of torture as carrying a ’special stigma’ and the potential for this gloss to operate as a shield for States. The chapter examines the various State obligations imposed by Article 3, noting the scope of the procedural obligation to investigate and its application in domestic law via the HRA. Specific issues including extraordinary rendition, whole life sentences and domestic abuse are examined to illuminate the limitations and protective potential of the right to freedom from ill-treatment.

Cybersecurity and cyberwar writ large are interconnected subjects that create serious challenges for policy makers. On an individual level we are far more likely to be the victims of cybercrime than of cyberwar. But the cyber challenge spans the entire gamut of security. From state-authorized attacks against another state, such as the deployment of Stuxnet against Iran, to the targeting of private industry like North Korea’s assault on Sony Pictures Entertainment, down through to the proliferation of cybercrime that impacts the everyday security of citizens sent a phishing scam via email, any way you cut it the cybersphere has a big impact on security. Indeed, if you live in a Western democracy, the chances are that you have also been at the individual level, as well as the societal level, at best an unwilling participant and at worse a victim of cyberwar via social media.

In this chapter we explore the central features of liberalism as they relate to issues of international security and how liberalism believes states can work together to achieve security. First, we examine the historical evolution of liberalism generally before going on to dissect the central features of liberalism related to security. For unlike realism, liberalism holds that the world need not be a place of continuous violent conflict; the international system can change, humanity can better itself. That said, realism and liberalism share many of the same assumptions about international relations and international security. This chapter concludes with a look at how liberalism manifests itself in international security policy.

Realism is one of many International Relations theories that attempt to understand and explain the way the international system functions in anarchy without any overarching government. It emphasizes the importance of individual states as the primary actors and decision makers within this system and argues that the most defining characteristics of all states include self-interested behavior and an inherent instinct to survive at any cost. The three main subcategories within realism are classical realism, neorealism (in its offensive and defensive variants), hegemonic realism and power-transition theories, and neoclassical realism.

The fifth chapter explores the application of spectral graph theory to network data analysis. The chapter begins with an introduction to fundamental graph theory concepts, including undirected and directed graphs, graph connectivity, and matrix representations such as the adjacency and Laplacian matrices. It then discusses the variational characterization of eigenvalues and their significance in understanding the structure of graphs. The chapter highlights the spectral properties of the Laplacian matrix, particularly its role in graph connectivity and partitioning. Key applications, such as spectral clustering for community detection and the analysis of random graph models like Erdős–Rényi random graphs and stochastic blockmodels, are presented. The chapter concludes with a detailed exploration of graph partitioning algorithms and their practical implementations using Python.

Regulation of the beginning and end of life raises myriad medical, legal, philosophical, moral and ethical issues. It also implicates a range of rights, most notably the right to life, freedom from ill-treatment and the right to private life. This chapter considers the ways in which State regulation of abortion, withdrawal/refusal of medical treatment and assisted dying engage rights protected by the ECHR. In particular, this chapter examines when life begins for the purposes of Article 2 (right to life) and whether the right to life precludes or, indeed, requires that States enable access to assistance in dying. Domestic law is considered, demonstrating the ways in which the margin of appreciation operates to confer a significant degree of latitude on States to regulate the beginning and end of life.

Conventional war is organized violence subordinate to a political objective in which there is pervasive uncertainty and chance. Technology has changed the way war is fought in many ways, but many wars are decidedly low-tech. Often linked to the technologies of war are typical strategies by which states conduct regular war. These strategies are distinguished by the attention they pay to punishing the adversary versus denying them their goals, as well as to attacking capabilities versus the will to go on fighting. Each strategy bases a theory of victory on identifying how the military actions will link to a state’s political objectives. While the advent of nuclear weapons has raised the costs of war between nuclear states, there appears to be no end to the practice of war in the near future.

The fourth chapter introduces the singular value decomposition (SVD), a fundamental matrix factorization with broad applications in data science. The chapter begins by reviewing key linear algebra concepts, including matrix rank and the spectral theorem. It then explores the problem of finding the best low-dimensional approximating subspace to a set of data points, leading to the formal definition of the SVD. The power iteration method is presented as an efficient way to compute the top singular vectors and values. The chapter then demonstrates the application of SVD to principal components analysis (PCA), a dimensionality reduction technique that identifies the directions of maximum variance in data. Further applications of the SVD are discussed, including low-rank matrix approximations and ridge regression, a regularization technique for handling multicollinearity in linear systems.

Immigration is one of the most politically charged aspects of human rights law. This chapter examines the application of Article 8 ECHR in cases where migrants face deportation and where family members seek entry to the Contracting State. In practice few applicants succeed in using Article 8 ECHR to resist deportation even in cases where they were born or lived almost their entire life in the State. This has led to the criticism that the ECtHR prioritises State sovereignty, above migrants, rendering the rights virtually meaningless and legitimising States’ practices. An opposing perspective is that the process of having to justify deportation to an international human rights court is an incursion into State sovereignty that exceeds the limits of the ECtHR’s role. The case law on family reunification is equally contested by both those that believe the ECtHR is exceeding its legitimate function and those that believe the ECtHR is averting its eyes to the hardship and suffering of migrants. The final part of this chapter examines the ways in which Article 8 ECHR has been shaped by domestic immigration law and the driving forces behind the interpretation and application of rights.

The goal of this chapter is to introduce systemic racism and critical race theory. It begins with the story of Breonna Taylor, a successful health-care professional and twenty-six-year-old Black woman who was killed in her home in Louisville, Kentucky, by plainclothes White police officers in 2020. It galvanized the Black Lives Matter movement against systemic racism, the approach to racism that recognizes that all institutions and persons play a role in it, including us. This chapter reviews the history of police violence in the US, the defining features of systemic racism and popular myths about it, and some major themes in critical race theory, a framework that can help us see why race and racism were invented and why they persist despite reform. Colorblind racial ideology, multiculturalism, and anti-racism are discussed as strategies that deal with racism. The chapter includes a Food for Thought section on Nikole Hannah-Jones and the 1619 Project. It ends with a discussion of anti-racism, police violence, and justice for Breonna Taylor.

This chapter examines the human rights implications of the UK’s legal response to terrorism, focusing on the ECHR. It explores the significant body of terrorism legislation that has evolved over the past three decades, considering also the legacy of The Troubles. There are myriad rights that may be impacted by terrorism legislation including the right to life, freedom from ill-treatment, right to liberty, right to a fair trial, freedom of religion, freedom of expression, freedom of association and the right to enjoy such rights free from discrimination. Having regard to the evolving nature of terrorist threats including, for instance, inceldom and right-wing extremism, and the increasing role of online modes of communication, the chapter examines the potential limitations of the existing legal framework in responding to terrorism. The chapter further explores the role of the derogation power under Article 15 ECHR in the counter-terrorism context and the potential for a progressive dilution of rights as courts are called upon to accommodate within the existing rights rubric increasingly restrictive terrorism legislation.