Bravo to President Obama On Harold Koh Pick!

We applaud President Obama’s decision yesterday to name Yale Law School Dean Harold Hongju Koh, a longtime critic of the Bush administration’s antiterror policies, to be the U.S. Department of State’s legal adviser.  In that position, he will provide counsel on international law to the secretary of state and embassies around the world.

Harold Koh is an ideal person to lead a return to the rule of law in U.S. conduct around the world.  He is the dean of Yale Law School and Gerard C. and Bernice Latrobe Smith Professor of International Law. Koh began teaching at Yale Law School in 1985 and has served since 2004 as its fifteenth Dean. From 1998 to 2001, he served as U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, and previously had served on the Secretary of State’s Advisory Committee on Public International Law. Before joining Yale, he practiced law at Covington and Burling from 1982-83 and at the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice from 1983-85. Dean Koh is a leading expert on public and private international law, national security law, and human rights. He has argued before the United States Supreme Court and he has testified before the U.S. Congress more than twenty times. He has been awarded eleven honorary doctorates and three law school medals and has received more than thirty awards for his human rights work. He is recipient of the 2005 Louis B. Sohn Award from the American Bar Association International Law Section and the 2003 Wolfgang Friedmann Award from Columbia Law School for his lifetime achievements in International Law. He is author or co-author of eight books.

A Korean-American native of Boston, he holds a B.A. degree from Harvard College and B.A. and M.A. degrees from Oxford University, where he was a Marshall Scholar. He earned his J.D. from Harvard Law School, where he was Developments Editor of the Harvard Law Review, and served as a law clerk for Justice Harry A. Blackmun of the United States Supreme Court and Judge Malcolm Richard Wilkey of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

The conservative bloggers already (see, e.g., National Review) are attacking Dean Koh.  Let it be known that we support him from the outset”  Koh’s unswerving commitment to human rights and the rule of law, is a much-needed antidote to the last eight long years.   IntLawGrrls Diane Marie Amann has posted a nice response to the anti-rule of law bloggers opposing Dean Koh.  

KJ