The Senate Judiciary Committee begins hearings tomorrow on the confirmation of White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales as the next attorney general of the United States.

Central to the hearings will be Gonzales” role in paving the legal groundwork that led to the torture of detainees at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. In a highly controversial January 2002 memo, Gonzales wrote that the war on terror “renders obsolete [the Geneva Convention’s] strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions.”

In August 2002, a Justice Department memo sought by Gonzales contended the president has “commander-in-chief authority” to order torture and proposed potential legal defenses for U.S. officials who may be accused of torture. The memo also argued that physical abuse of prisoners was torture only if it was “of an intensity akin to…serious physical injury such as death or organ failure,” and mental abuse was torture only if it caused “lasting psychological harm.”