The Wall Street Journal reports that the Obama administration “is weighing plans to detain some terror suspects on U.S. soil — indefinitely and without trial — as part of a plan to retool military commission trials that were conducted for prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.”

But State Department legal adviser nominee Harold Koh opposes indefinite detention of enemy combatants: “The U.S. government should either charge the detainees criminally in civilian courts or find other countries who will accept them for criminal trial.” (Koh, Restoring America’s Human Rights Reputation,” 40 Corn. Int’l L. J. 635, 655 (2007).)

I’m not sure at this point whether Koh’s opposition rests only on “human rights” policy grounds or also on legal grounds. Either way, this is yet another matter — see also military commissions and use of military force abroad — in Koh’s radical transnationalist record that raises the question why President Obama would want Koh to serve as the State Department’s top lawyer.