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The Yale Alumni Magazine is owned and operated by Yale Alumni Publications, Inc., a nonprofit corporation independent of Yale University.

The content of the magazine and its website is the responsibility of the editors and does not necessarily reflect the views of Yale or its officers.

Waiting is over for Koh
June 26, 2009
by Carole Bass '83, '97MSL

Ending two months of Republican resistance, the U.S. Senate has confirmed outgoing Yale Law School dean Harold Hongju Koh as legal adviser to the State Department. Koh, who served as assistant secretary for democracy, human rights, and labor in the administration of Bill Clinton '73JD, will now become the top lawyer for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton '73JD and for U.S. diplomats worldwide.

The 65-32 vote came on June 25, a day after the Senate invoked cloture, ending a threatened GOP filibuster and a three-month delay of the confirmation vote.

Koh's nomination in March kicked up a storm of conservative opposition, mainly based on his view that U.S. courts should consider legal precedents from like-minded countries. This transnationalist stance jeopardizes American sovereignty, in the opinion of some critics. Right-wing bloggers and TV personalities also picked up a dubious story that Koh had endorsed the use of sharia, or Islamic law, in American jurisprudence.

Other prominent conservatives, including former solictors general Ted Olson and Ken Starr, came out in favor of Koh's confirmation.

The university, perhaps anticipating that the Senate would finally act, named Koh's replacement as Yale Law School dean three days before the confirmation. Robert C. Post '77JD, a constitutional law scholar on the Yale faculty since 2003, will take over from acting dean Kate Stith on July 1.

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