The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib ‐ Edited by Karen J. Greenberg and Joshua L. Dratel

In 1999 my father bought me a hardback copy of Geoffrey Robertson’s Crimes against Humanity.1 He inscribed it with the following words, taken from Martin Luther King, Jr: ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere’.2 Around the time the book was published, General Pinochet was denied immunity in the United Kingdom;3 President Milošević was indicted for the commission of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in the former Yugoslavia;4 numerous perpetrators of genocide were being indicted in Rwanda;5 and the international community had resolved to create a permanent International Criminal Court.6 It seemed we were entering an era that would witness the end of impunity for the commission of gross human rights violations. Justice everywhere would be strengthened. Fast-forward a little to 2005 and I am teaching my first year law students the principle of the rule of law, how fragile and vulnerable it can be, and the devastating consequences that can flow from its demise. Our case study is the detention of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay — including Australian citizens — by an Australian ally and global advocate of democracy. The war in Iraq forms a backdrop. As a record of the United States Government’s recent retreat from the rule of law, The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib7 delivers a crushing blow to my naïve belief in the beginning of the end of impunity. The Torture Papers is a weighty tome. Given its subject matter, this is an unhappy fact. A paper trail of more than 1000 pages documents a retreat from the rule of law and from justice in relation to non-citizens taken captive by the US in the course of the so-called ‘war on terror’. From Afghanistan to