Trosolwg

My PhD research applies ethics to the problem of jus cogens. The research aims to provide a vocabulary of ethics that moves beyond natural law and bridges the gap between law and politics. Existing scholarship requires this normative account of jus cogens, one that adequately engages with the politicisation of the concept in the international community. The existing literature is saturated by legal scholars and dominated by circular arguments aiming to simply define the idea of jus cogens in rudimentary terms. Importance therefore must be placed not on how states decide on the content of such a norm, but rather what ultimately gave that norm its identifiable non-derogable status. How do they emerge? How sustainable are they? Why are states not complying? If we have reached the end of this particular road of human rights, what next? The research will unpack the prohibition of torture as a unique peremptory norm of international law; this will provide a specific example that helps to answer these questions and move jus cogens and moral theory scholarship forward.