Judge Ann Williams of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals of the Seventh Circuit introduced keynote speaker Harold Koh at the Ninth Annual Midwest Light of Human Rights Awards on June 10, 2008.

Introduction of Harold Koh

The Honorable Ann Claire Williams, Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals

Ninth Annual Midwest Light of Human Rights Awards,

June 10, 2008 - Palmer House, Chicago

When Mary Meg McCarthy asked me to introduce Dean Harold Koh as our keynote speaker at this wonderful awards luncheon which honors the Heartland Alliance and the individuals and corporations that stand up for universal human rights, I had to say "yes." Yes, because Harold is an extraordinary human being and terrific lawyer, and "yes" because I so admire the work of the Alliance and all the groups it supports, and the people whose lives they change.

Then I got the time limit and realized I should have said "NO". There is no way to capture the incredible life of Harold Koh and why he is uniquely qualified to give the keynote address on "Restoring our Human Rights Reputation." He is a man who has said "yes" to excellence, humanity, and humility. In his welcome to the 2007 Yale Law School class, like he has told every entering class, he said, "I am Harold Koh, and I am the Dean here. Please call me Harold. I really do mean

that."

This Harvard Law Review editor, author of 10 books and numerous articles, U.S. circuit court clerk, Justice Blackmun law clerk, Reagan Justice Department and private practice lawyer, Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, leading expert on international law, 20-time congressional witness, winner of more than 25 awards, husband, father, brother, scholar, teacher, human and civil rights activist and Dean said, "Call me Harold".

He also shared with the class one of his favorite sayings, a mantra repeated by his father to Harold and his five brothers and sisters: "Theory without practice is as lifeless as practice without theory is thoughtless."

What did he mean by that? As Koh says, "Theory alone cannot change the world; lawyers must actually be skilled in the practice of law to change the world. . . . Lawyers do matter. Good lawyers matter more. One person can make a difference. A team of lawyers can beat an army. But to make that difference, you need not just energy but ideas, not just excellence but humanity, not just theory but practice." He continues, ". . . excellence without humanity is worthless, and accomplishment without humility is tragic".

That commitment to excellence, humanity and humility he learned from both his parents. About his mother, an expert on comparative cultures and a leader of the women's rights movement in Korea, he says: "She is the person who most influenced me on how to understand human relations. That's become a critical part of what I do."

Koh's father served as the Korean ambassador to the U.N. and a minister to the U.S., but when a military coup overtook the government, Koh's father refused to serve the dictatorship and moved to the United States. He was one of the first Koreans to study law in the United States, a Yale Law School faculty member, and as Harold says: "He was my greatest teacher."

His second lesson to the new class, another old Korean saying his father repeated and his parents lived by: "Never let your skill exceed your virtue." Which means as Koh says: "It is not enough for lawyers to learn legal skills. You must ask: who are my skills for? Skills . . . give us the power to throw people in jail, to save and destroy people's lives, to make arguments that can save millions of dollars. But as we have learned, with great power comes great responsibility. Each of these tools has its time and place."

Well, Harold Koh had tools and skills from the very beginning. As Guido Calabresi, a former Yale Law School dean and now Second Circuit judge who knew Koh when he was growing up, remembers, Koh's friends actually bought a wagon for him to carry home his awards from middle school.

Later, when he graduated from college and was heading to England on a scholarship, Harold says, and I quote, "a family friend came to me at graduation and congratulated me on my ‘accomplishments.' My older sister waited politely until the friend left, and then asked, ‘What accomplishments? You have no accomplishments. All you have done is go to school!' She said, ‘There are many people who have no schooling but have made genuine accomplishments; and there are many people with world-class schooling but no accomplishments. And the difference between them is that those who have really accomplished something know what they stand for.'"

And his sister's message is his final suggestion to the class: Decide what you stand for. Decide what you stand for and stand up. Koh says, "I ask you to be a leader and not just a follower, an architect and not a scrivener. I ask you to understand the role of law in a globalizing world, to pursue law as a noble profession, to commit yourself to careers not of selfishness, but of service. And when that moment comes, seize that moment, take that chance, don't play it safe. For on that day, you will decide not what you won't stand for, but what you actually do stand for".

He continued: "Who will you serve? Who needs you the most? And if you feel privileged . . . don't you have some duty-- to serve the least privileged?"

Harold Koh believes and has lived everything he says to the new law school classes. As a first-year faculty member, he started the Human Rights Clinic at Yale. And in 1992, Koh, with the help of Yale law students, sued the U.S. government for the right to visit Haitian clients who had fled Haiti after the coup and had their boats stopped by the U.S. Coast Guard. The case attracted national attention. In the book, Storming the Court: How a Band of Yale Law Students Sued the President -- and Won , Brandt Goldstein tells of their great victory, and that remarkable story about Koh and a band of Yale law students is now being made into a movie.

One part of the story, not often discussed was the Justice Department's move to get the case dismissed and to have Yale, and Koh, punished with financial sanctions.

During the course of the litigation, Koh went to see the manager of the New Haven Savings Bank's Hamden branch because he and his wife wanted to redo their kitchen. He told the manager his position at Yale and his wife's income as a legal aid lawyer. He asked, "Would the bank extend him a loan?" The manager, all smiles, had just a few routine questions. "Did Koh have any contingent liabilities?" "Well," Koh replied, "I recently filed a lawsuit against the United States government. They're demanding that I post a ten-million-dollar bond, and I face financial sanctions for bringing an allegedly frivolous case." The manager looked at Koh in surprise. After a few moments, he put down his pen. "I'm sorry." Koh won the case, and, I'm happy to say . . . remodeled his kitchen.

Did standing up for the Haitians and opposing both the Bush and Clinton administrations torpedo his career? Six years later, Koh was shocked when an aide to Madeleine Albright called to offer him a position as an Assistant Secretary of State. Koh reminded the aide that he had sued the Clinton Administration, but the aide said, "Don't worry, we are not looking for a yes-man . . . .That's why we want you. You're nobody's yes-man. Everybody knows where you stand, and it will give us credibility to have you." He was and is a stand-up "yes" man. I end with the words of President John F. Kennedy, which I have modified to be gender neutral:

"For those to whom much is given, much is required. And when at some future date the high court of history sits in judgment on each of us, Recording whether in our brief span of service we fulfilled our responsibilities to the state, Our success or failure, in whatever office we hold, will be measured by the answers to four questions: First, were we truly people of courage? Second, were we truly people of judgment? Third, were we truly people of integrity? Finally, were we truly people of dedication?" Can we each say "yes" to courage? "Yes" to judgment? "Yes" to integrity? "Yes" to dedication? I now give you the man who has said "yes" to courage, "yes" to judgment, "yes" to integrity, "yes" to dedication.

Our keynote speaker, Harold Koh.