Harold Hongju Koh, dean of the Yale Law School and a vocal critic of the Bush administration, has been nominated as legal adviser to the State Department. It’s an odd pick by the administration, if only because of Koh’s view that the war in Iraq was not only wrong, but a violation of international law. Of course, Secretary Clinton voted to authorize the invasion, and defended her vote for years afterward. Koh will now be advising someone who, if he has the courage of his convictions, he deems guilty of war crimes. That might lead to some conflict down the road. It’s also striking that while the foreign policy posts in this administration have, for the most part, gone to “realists” (Clinton would be the exception as a liberal hawk), the legal positions seem to be going to dyed-in-the-wool liberals (Dawn Johnsen, David Barron, Eric Holder, Marty Lederman, etc.). What this sets up is a foreign policy apparatus that is ideologically averse to military intervention and a legal establishment that would hog-tie Obama if he were to intervene in some new conflict. If, for example, you were a Democrat who hoped this administration would do something about Darfur (besides appoint the completely-out-of-his-depth Scott Gration as envoy), these kind of appointments should be worrisome.
