Legal expert can discuss nomination of U.S. Attorney General

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Scanning electron micrograph image of the surface of a lotus leaf. Ohio State University engineers are using the bumpy leaf as a model for slick, water-repellent surfaces. The species of lotus shown here is Nelumba nucifera. Image courtesy of Ohio State University.

An Ohio State expert on international law and armed conflict can discuss President Bush’s nomination of the Honorable Alberto Gonzales to succeed John Ashcroft as Attorney General of the United States. The Senate Committee on the Judiciary will hold nomination hearings on Thursday (1/6).

Ohio State Professor Mary Ellen O’Connell is available to discuss Gonzales’s conclusions in a January 25, 2002, memorandum that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to persons in U.S. custody in Iraq, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and Afghanistan. O’Connell can also comment on assertions by some that Gonzales’s interpretation of the Conventions helped set the conditions for torture and abuse of detainees.

O’Connell, the William B. Saxbe Designated Professor of Law at the Moritz College of Law and Fellow of the Mershon Center for International Security, wrote a book called “International Law and the Use of Force” (2005), which deals extensively with the Geneva Conventions.

O’Connell can be reached at (614) 292-8759 or by e-mail at oconnell.44@osu.edu.