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 in the Haditha incident, would they not be exposed to prosecution at the ICC if the U.S. were to ratify the Rome Statute?
Given your support for what you describe as “global gun control,” “supply-side control” within the United States, the development of “legal and policy arguments” for gun control, and your beliefs that the convention would require the U.S. to standardize its national laws and that “stronger domestic regulation” is essential, what is your position on the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty, which is essentially a global version of the Inter-American Convention?
Do you believe that U.S. courts at all levels should factor in foreign legal opinions when deciding domestic law issues? When should a U.S. court factor in such opinions, and when should they not do so?
Was the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999—an attack that was not “authorized” by the U.N. Security Council—a violation of international law?