Restoring America's Human Rights Reputation
2007-11-13
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Restoring America's Human Rights Reputation
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2007-11-13
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The Bush administration's war on terror has opened up debates over U.S. human rights policy that many had considered settled matters. Is the U.S. now conducting "torture"? Does its designation and treatment of "enemy combatants" and operation of Guantanamo Bay violate international norms of human rights that the U.S. helped to establish? What are the implications of these debates for the global reputation of the U.S. and for the effectiveness of the global fight against terrorism?
Harold Koh, Dean of Yale Law School, discussed the meaning and significance of the changes in America's human rights policies. After his presentation, he was joined by former Vice President Walter F. Mondale and Professor Kathryn Sikkink, Arleen Carlson Chair in Political Science, University of Minnesota.
Harold Hongju Koh is the Martin R. Flug '55 Professor of International Law. On June 25, 2009, he U.S. Senate confirmed Professor Kohas 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. 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.
Professor 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, including Transnational Litigation in United States Courts, Foundations of International Law and Politics (with O. Hathaway); Transnational Legal Problems (with H. Steiner and D. Vagts), Transnational Business Problems (with D. Vagts and W. Dodge), and The National Security Constitution, which won the American Political Science Association's award in 1991 as the best book on the American Presidency. He was also the editor of The Justice Harry A. Blackmun Oral History Project (1994-95). He has published more than 150 articles on international human rights, international business transactions, national security and foreign affairs law, international trade, international organizations, international law and political science, and procedure.
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.
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Jacobs, Lawrence R.. (2007). Restoring America's Human Rights Reputation. Retrieved from the University Digital Conservancy, https://hdl.handle.net/11299/216234.
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