than a dozen times. He has received numerous awards, medals, and honorary degrees. Blogger David Lat and George Mason professor David Bernstein (contributing to the Volokh Conspiracy), have described Koh as a "highly partisan Democrat" and claim that he has politically polarized Yale Law School during his tenure as dean. Other observers countered that during his tenure prominent conservatives have been appointed to the Yale Law School faculty, and noted that Koh served in both Republican (Reagan) and Democratic (Clinton) administrations. A group of Yale Conservative Law Students offered a vigorous defense of Koh, noting that "Dean Koh has been very supportive of conservative students and conservative student organizations." They concluded that "Dean Koh is one of the brightest legal minds of his generation, a credit to the profession we look forward to joining, and an able and effective public servant." On May 4, 2010, the Friends of the Law Library of the Library of Congress presented Koh with their annual award named for George W. Wickersham. Law reform work Koh was elected to the American Law Institute in 1992 and was elected to the ALI Council in 2007. He stepped down from the Council when he worked for the Obama administration, but was re-elected to Council when he ended his tenure with the State Department and returned to Yale. He currently serves as a Counselor on the Restatement Fourth, the Foreign Relations Law of the United States, and previously served as an Adviser on the Principles of Transnational Civil Procedure project. State Department Legal Adviser Nomination and confirmation On March 23, 2009, the White House announced Koh's nomination as Legal Adviser to the State Department in the Obama administration, the senior legal adviser to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. His nomination was generally supported in the Senate and among legal colleagues. The nomination drew criticism from some conservative commentators for his views on international law and its use in American legal analysis and jurisprudence, while drawing support from other conservatives such as Ted Olson and Kenneth Starr as well as Forbes magazine. Koh has written in support of the practice of using tenets of international law and foreign legal precedent to inform the deliberative process of judicial decision making in the United States, and has described what he has called "transnational jurisprudence" as essential to maintaining a well-ordered international legal system. Arguing that "concepts like liberty, equality and privacy