Judges considered Thursday whether the Freedom of Information Act requires the CIA and other federal agencies to process requests for release of the full 6,963-page Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA interrogation practices that critics call torture.

Two D.C. Circuit appeals court judges, Sri Srinivasan and Harry Edwards, heard oral arguments in the American Civil Liberties Union’s appeal of an unfavorable lower court ruling. A third seat was empty due to Judge Merrick Garland’s Wednesday nomination to the Supreme Court.

Srinivasan, considered one of the front-runners for the nomination that went to Garland, took the lead in questioning attorneys and nodded supportively to show he grasped both sides of a technical, case law-dependent dispute.

A 499-page executive summary of the Senate committee report was released with redactions in 2014, revealing jarring accounts of weeklong sleep deprivation, waterboarding and use of purported medical procedures like “rectal feeding.”

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