Friday, February 6, 2009

New State Department Legal Adviser?

Harold Hongju Koh, a popular dean of Yale Law School, is being considered for the top State Department legal post: http://abovethelaw.com/2009/02/dean_koh_to_state_department.php

Hopefully, if appointed, Dean Koh will make the same demands for transparency and accountability on the State Department's Bureau of Educational Affairs ("ECA") and its Cultural Heritage Center that President Obama has made on the Federal Government as a whole.

In the meantime, the IAPN-PNG-ACCG FOIA litigation against the State Department grinds on. Important questions about ECA's processes for imposing import restrictions on cultural goods, including those as common as coins, remain to be answered. Will we only learn what we can after a Court orders production of documents? Or, will the new bosses of the State Department voluntarily shed some light on the decision making of the past?

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