What about human rights law? Certainly, torture is widely under- stood as a paradigmatic human rights abuse. It is the sort of evil that arouses human rights passions and drives human rights campaigns. The idea of a human rights code that lacked a prohibition on torture is barely intelligible to us. Now it is true that even human rights advocates accept the idea that rights are subject to interpretation, as well as the limitation to meet "the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society." And few are so immoderate in their human rights advocacy that they do not accept that "[i]n time of public emergency which threatens the life of the nation" the human rights obligations of the state may be limited.²⁶⁴ People are willing to accept that the human rights regime does not unravel altogether when detention without trial is permitted, when habeas corpus is suspended, or when free speech or freedom of assembly is limited in times of grave emergency. But were we to put up for acceptance as an integral part of the main body of human rights law the proposition that people may be tortured in times of emergency, I think people would sense that the whole game was being given away and that human rights law itself was entering a crisis. "Waldron, Torture and Positive Law, p. 1744.

1. In the first sentence, Waldron declares that torture is understood as paradigmatic human rights abuse. What does this declaration mean?

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