International Law Expert to Deliver Raichle Lecture at Canisius University

March 5, 2019

BUFFALO, NY—The Canisius University Frank G. Raichle Lecture Series on Law in American Society welcomes Harold Hongju Koh to campus on Thursday, March 28 at 7:15 p.m. in the Grupp Fireside Lounge on the second floor of the Richard E. Winter ’42 Student Center.  The event, entitled “The Trump Administration and International Law,” is free and open to the public. Koh’s lecture will be followed by a question and answer session and a book signing. His visit is co-sponsored by the International Relations Program at Canisius University.

Koh, the Sterling Professor of International Law at Yale Law School, is one of the country’s leading experts in public and private international law, national security law and human rights. He began teaching at Yale Law School in 1985 and served as its dean from 2004 until 2009. From 2009 to 2013, Koh was Legal Adviser of the U.S. Department of State, service for which he received the Secretary of State’s Distinguished Service Award. From 1998 to 2001, Koh served as U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. 

He has received seventeen honorary degrees and numerous awards for his human rights work, including awards from Columbia Law School and the American Bar Association for his lifetime achievements in international law. Koh has authored or co-authored eight books, published more than 200 articles, testified regularly before Congress, and litigated numerous cases involving international law issues in both U.S. and international tribunals. He is a fellow of the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an honorary fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, and a member of the Council of the American Law Institute. 

Koh holds a BA degree from Harvard College and BA and MA degrees from Oxford University, where he was a Marshall Scholar. He earned his JD from Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. Before coming to Yale, he 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, worked as an attorney in private practice in Washington, and served as an attorney-adviser for the Office of Legal Counsel, U.S. Department of Justice.

For more information, contact The Frank G. Raichle Pre-Law Center at (716) 888-2695.

Canisius is one of 28 Jesuit universities in the nation and the premier private university in Western New York.

                                                                    -30-