Convictions: Slate's blog on legal issues

Must share this exchange from a session today on international law after Iraq at the American Society of International Law's annual meeting in Washington.

 

Audience member Jason Dominguez, a law professor at Texas Southern University, raised with panelist and U.S. Department of Defense lawyer Sandy Hodgkinson a question comparing the U.S. drive for rapid accountability against leaders of the former Iraqi regime with the rather different approach to domestic accountability for the abuse that Iraqi detainees endured at U.S. hands in the prison in Abu Ghraib. She answered the first part, then stopped. Dominguez's reply—"And as for Abu Ghraib?"—prompted Hodgkinson to a recitation of positive changes in U.S. treatment of the tens of thousands of Iraqis now detained in Iraq. On the list was this:

Indeed.