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Law School dean named to State Department post Last September, Yale Law School dean Harold Hongju Koh testified (PDF) before the U.S. Senate about the Bush administration's "infamous list" of legal violations: Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, torture, warrantless wiretapping of U.S. citizens, and more. Koh will soon be appearing before the Senate again. This time, he'll be seeking confirmation for a job that will give him a chance to reverse what he called the "sorry historical record" of recent years: President Barack Obama has nominated him as legal adviser to the State Department. Coming after months of rumors, Obama's call punctuates Koh's five-year term as dean, which ends in June. Yale president Richard Levin appointed longtime law professor Kate Stith as acting dean, summoning her home from a Rome vacation to take over immediately so that Koh can start preparing for confirmation. When he goes back before the Senate Judiciary Committee for that confirmation hearing—probably in late April, he told a meeting of the law school community on March 24—he may face some controversy. A 24-year veteran of the Yale Law School faculty who served as assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights, and labor during the Clinton administration, Koh can hardly be characterized as an outsider or a radical. But he has repeatedly challenged authority, including the U.S. government. If confirmed, he will become the top lawyer for Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton '73JD and U.S. diplomats worldwide. The State Department's Office of the Legal Adviser has roughly 160 lawyers whose "work is as varied as all of international law," Koh's immediate predecessor, John Bellinger, blogged in 2007. But, Bellinger noted, its lawyers "work especially hard on human rights and international criminal justice issues"—precisely the areas to which Koh brings his greatest experience and passion. In the early 1990s, long before George W. Bush '68 made Guantanamo a prison for "enemy combatants," then-professor Koh helped students at Yale's Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Law Clinic sue the U.S. government on behalf of Haitian refugees held there. Under Koh's leadership, clinic students also took international political leaders to court for alleged atrocities, winning more than $100 million. Koh's name often comes up as a possible U.S. Supreme Court nominee. For now, though, his prospective post is at the State Department. Addressing the law school community, Koh said he was offered the job "in a private way" even before Obama was inaugurated, and "I'm not totally sure" what took so long to make it public. "I was nominated by the Yale Daily News" in early February, he joked, referring to an article that speculated about his appointment. "But President Obama hadn't gotten the message." Stith, the acting dean, is an expert on criminal law and an authority on federal sentencing guidelines. She has taught at the law school since 1985—arriving six months before Koh -- and gained administrative experience as deputy dean under Anthony Kronman. "There's no one who knows the law school or the university better," Koh said, than the woman he calls "Kate the Great." He told the assembled students, faculty, and staff that he will definitely return to Yale. "This is my home. The way I teach is to tell war stories," Koh said. "After 10 years, I've run out of war stories, so I've got to go get some more." Stith evidently expects that he will have no trouble accumulating those stories. "Harold, you're an extraordinary problem-solver," she told him. "And you have a lot of
problems to solve. We wish you very good luck." |
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