Alum Picked For Federal Court

The Honorable Lucy H. Koh ’90 was nominated by President Barack Obama last Wednesday to serve on the State District Court for the Northern District of California. If Koh, who is also a 1993 graduate of Harvard Law School, is confirmed by the Senate, she will become the nation’s first Korean-American federal district court judge.

“This is a terrific appointment and we at the Law School are proud of her,” said HLS Dean Martha Minow, who taught Koh in a civic procedure class during Koh’s time at the Law School.

Minow described Koh as a “fine law student” who exhibited “talent and accomplishment” even in her early twenties.

“She will be a great judge,” Minow said.

After Law School, Koh amassed considerable legal experience in the public and private sectors.

Prior to her 2008 nomination to a judgeship in the Santa Clara County Superior Court, Koh began her career at the Department of Justice and then moved to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles to prosecute violent crime and fraud cases. She later worked as an intellectual property litigator in Silicon Valley with the firm McDermott, Will & Emery.

Bijal V. Vakil, Koh’s former coworker and the Regional Governor for the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association, said that placing Koh on the federal bench would send a positive message to the Asian-American community in Northern California.

“In the San Francisco Bay Area, we don’t have a single Asian-American district court judge [though] the is over 35 percent Asian,” Vakil said. “It’s kind of shocking.”

Second year HLS student Jennifer A. Lee, who serves as conference co-chair for the Asian Pacific American Law Students Association at HLS, said she believes Koh’s nomination is an important symbolic step.

“Asian-Americans and, I think, all students of color still face a degree of uncertainty. There is definitely concern about how their ethnicity will impact their success,” Lee said. “For law students, we have a greater degree of faith in our ability to succeed when we see these ground-breaking types of appointments.”

Koh is married to Stanford Law Professor Mariano-Florentino Cuellar ’93, and the couple have two children.

—Staff writer Evan T. R. Rosenman can be reached at erosenm@fas.harvard.edu.