On March 23, President Obama nominated Harold Koh, former Dean of the Yale Law School, to be Legal Adviser at the U.S. Department of State. As Heritage U.S. Senate Relations Director Brian Darling writes in Human Events, “one of the many concerns [conservatives have] with Koh is his belief that international organizations should be empowered to regulate the Second Amendment right to own a firearm.” Conservatives are concerned with the shift away from reliance on the Constitution as the final legal authority in the U.S. toward transnational jurisprudence favored by …
Today’s confirmation hearing for Harold Koh, President Obama’s nominee as Legal Adviser for the State Department, is an important hurdle, but it’s not the last one. As a transnationalist, Koh is not normally respectful of the Senate’s “advice and consent” role in making treaties. The full Senate can therefore be expected to take a lively interest in his nomination. It’s this question of ‘what next’ that sums up part of the problem. For example, according to Koh, the U.S. was wrong not to participate in the 2001 Durban Conference. The …
Today at 2:15 the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations will hold a confirmation hearing for State Department Legal Adviser nominee Harold Koh. While Koh has an impeccable academic resume, his opinions opinions regarding the role that rulings of foreign courts should play within the U.S. legal system raise serious national security and constitutional questions. Heritage fellows Steven Groves and Ted Bromund have identified some questions the American people deserve to be addressed before Koh is confirmed, including: Since the U.S. ultimately dropped all charges against most of the Marines involved …
As we pointed out on Monday, State Department Legal Advisor nominee Harold Koh’s praise for the “Inter-American Convention Against the Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms, Ammunition, Explosives, and Other Related Materials” is misguided in several respects. One of these is that the Convention requires all signatories to criminalize the “counseling” of the commission of the illicit manufacturing of, or trafficking in, firearms. What would happen if the Senate ratified the Treaty – which President Clinton signed in 1998, and which the U.S. already abides by spirit – without …
The Administration’s nominee for Legal Adviser to the State Department, Harold Koh, has explained – in his 1998 Frankel Lecture, later published in the Houston Law Review – that one of the Adviser’s roles is to “help maintain . . . habitual compliance with internalized international norms.” He has also praised what he describes as “sympathetic people from within government,” who take it upon themselves not only to ensure compliance with previous norms, but to promote new ones. It is therefore relevant to examine Koh’s views on the origin and …
Last week, during his visit to Mexico, administration officials confirmed that Pres. Obama will push the U.S. Senate to ratify the “Inter-American Convention Against the Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms, Ammunition, Explosives, and Other Related Materials.” The Clinton administration signed the treaty after the Organization of American States adopted it in 1997. The Administration’s nominee for Legal Adviser to the State Department, Harold Koh, has praised the Convention. This praise is misguided, and raises questions about Koh’s commitment to free speech around the world, and his willingness to …
Yesterday, during his visit to Mexico, senior administration officials confirmed that President Obama will push the U.S. Senate to ratify the “Inter-American Convention Against the Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms, Ammunition, Explosives, and Other Related Materials.” The Clinton administration signed the treaty, better known by its Spanish acronym CIFTA, after the Organization of American States adopted it in 1997. The Senate has not ratified it, but as the administration acknowledges, the U.S. has abided by the spirit of the treaty. The treaty, while not as fundamentally flawed as …
The Washington Independent‘s David Weigel has a very fair piece on conservative efforts to educate the public about State Department legal advisor nominee Harold Koh’s “transnationalist” legal beliefs. Weigel quotes National Review’s Ed Whelan: “What judicial transnationalism is really all about is depriving American citizens of their powers of representative government by selectively imposing on them the favored policies of Europe’s leftist elites.” Also engaging Koh’s substantive views, former Koh student Julian Ku who has identified 10 Questions for Koh at Opinio Juris, including: 2) You have argued in your …
On the plus side, the New York Times chose to write a story about the opposition former Clinton administration official Harold Koh is facing from conservatives over his appointment as State Department legal adviser. Unfortunately the NYT then completely ignored Koh’s most controversial legal beliefs in support of legal transnationalism. As National Review’s Ed Whelan explains, transnationalism is not an epithet created by conservatives, it is how Koh describes his own beliefs. Also at National Review, Andy McCarthy explains why the fight over Koh’s nomination matters: This is an argument …
Ceding control of financial regulations to the European Union is just the beginning of the Obama Administration war on the sovereignty of the United States of America. Just last week, President Barack Obama nominated former Clinton administration official Harold Koh to become the State Department’s legal adviser. Koh describes himself as a “transnationalist” and in a 2006 Penn State International Law Review article he described what this meant: Generally speaking, the transnationalists tend to emphasize the interdependence between the United States and the rest of the world, while the nationalists …
