INTERNATIONAL LAW AND COMPARATIVE LAW

Legal dogmatic reflection on “Private torture crime”

Abstract

In R. v. Reeves Taylor, the UK Supreme Court ruled that Reeves Taylor lacked the “official identity” required to qualify his actions as torture, sparking significant debate in the international community. This decision demonstrated the complexity of applying international criminal law to individual actors operating outside formal state structures and called into question the effectiveness of existing mechanisms for accountability for torture. The prevailing discourse in international criminal law tends to support the radical approach of a “private crime against torture”, which allows an individual's actions to be considered a separate crime, regardless of their official position. This approach, while theoretically enabling Reeves Taylor to be held accountable and ensuring the implementation of criminal justice for the victims, in practice it creates serious challenges to legal certainty, violates formal standards of the rule of law, and calls into question the stability of the existing legal system. In this context, it seems appropriate to examine the concept of "official identity" within the crime of torture through the lens of legal dogma, establishing reasonable and justifiable boundaries for the scope of this crime. Only by respecting the existing legal framework, including the provisions of the UN Convention against Torture, can a balance be achieved between the formal and substantive dimensions of criminal justice, ensuring fair prosecution without violating the fundamental principles of law and the rule of law.