Harold Hongju Koh
Fmr. Asst. Secretary for Democracy, Rights and Labor

• What is the ICC? (0:48) Audio Video
• Is the ICC fair? (0:18) Audio Video
• Why should the U.S. support and participate with the ICC? (1:30) Audio Video
• What should the U.S. government do now? (0:33) Audio Video

Biography

Dean Koh, an expert on human rights and international law who has taught at Yale Law School since 1985, is the Dean of Yale Law School. He was Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor from 1998 to 2001.

Before joining Yale University, where he is the Gerard C. and Bernice Latrobe Smith Professor of International Law, Dean Koh practiced law at the Washington, D.C., law firm of Covington and Burling and at the Office of Legal Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice. Before that, he was a law clerk to Judge Malcolm Wilkey of the D.C. Circuit and Justice Harry Blackmun of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Dean Koh has written dozens of articles in his areas of expertise, and has authored or co-edited Justice Harry Blackmun Supreme Court Oral History Project (2004); Different But Equal: The Human Rights of Persons with Intellectual Disabilities (2003); Transnational Business Problems (2003); Deliberative Democracy and Human Rights (1999); Transnational Legal Problems (1984); and The National Security Constitution (1990), which won the American Political Science Association's award for best book on the American presidency.

Dean Koh is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the American Law Institute, an Honorary Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, and an overseer of Harvard University. He was an editor of the American Journal of International Law and has received Guggenheim and Century Foundation Fellowships. In 2003, he was awarded Columbia Law School's Wolfgang Friedmann Memorial Award for his contributions to international law. He sits on the Brookings Institution’s Board of Trustees.

Dean Koh received his A.B. in Government from Harvard College in 1975, an Honors B.A. in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from Oxford in 1977, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1980.