Harold Koh

Harold Hongju Koh is Martin R. Flug '55 Professor of International Law at Yale University, from which he is on leave to serve as Legal Adviser to the United States Department of State. He began teaching at Yale Law School in 1985 and served from 2004 until 2009 as its fifteenth Dean. He has argued before the United States Supreme Court and he has testified before the U.S. Congress more than twenty times. While he is considered a liberal in international law and U.S. constitutional law, he is also acknowledged as a legal teacher and thinker across the ideological spectrum: the very conservative John Yoo, in the introduction to a 2005 book, wrote "Harold Koh sparked my interest in foreign affairs and the Constitution;" Yoo often quotes Koh as an authority on the other side of Yoo's argument.

Obama Administration

On June 25, 2009, the U.S. Senate confirmed Professor Koh, after considerable controversy and political maneuvering. Opponents claimed that his views on transnationalism meant that he wanted to subordinate the sovereignty of the United States to international organizations, and make foreign court decisions binding on U.S. judicial decisions. Supporters say that this is a visceral and untrue response to anyone who would undo the unilateralism of the George W. Bush Administration.

Previous Administrations

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.

Awards

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.

Early career

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.

Memberships

He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, an Honorary Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, a former Visiting Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford, and a member of the Council of the American Law Institute. He has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Century Foundation. He has sat on the Board of Overseers of Harvard University and sits on the Boards of Directors of the Brookings Institution, Human Rights First, the American Arbitration Association, and the National Democratic Institute.

Awards

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 has been named one of America's “45 Leading Public Sector Lawyers Under The Age of 45” by American Lawyer magazine and one of the “100 Most Influential Asian-Americans of the 1990s” by A magazine.

Education

• B.A. degree from Harvard College
• B.A. and M.A. degrees from Oxford University, where he was a Marshall Scholar
• J.D. from Harvard Law School, where he was Developments Editor of the Harvard Law Reviewserved as a *law clerk for Justice Harry Blackmun of the Supreme Court of the United States and Judge Malcolm Richard Wilkey of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.