Charles N. Brower

Charles N. Brower

Charles N. Brower

Professorial Lecturer in Law


2000 H Street, NW Washington, DC 20052

The Honorable Charles N. Brower first joined the George Washington University Law School faculty in 2015-2017 as a Distinguished Visiting Research Professor of Law. His career in the law spans over 55 years, combining extensive practice at the bar with distinguished public service, both national and international, concentrating over 35 years in the fields of public international law and international dispute resolution. As a member of 20 Essex Street Chambers, Judge Brower currently serves as an Arbitrator in a number of international commercial and investment-treaty arbitrations, as a Judge of the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal, and as Judge ad hoc in three cases before the International Court of Justice (ICJ). He regularly hires George Washington University law students to act as interns, assisting him in his private practice.

Following eight years with the international law firm White & Case LLP (1961-1969), Judge Brower served in the United States Department of State (1969-1973) successively as Assistant Legal Adviser for European Affairs, Deputy Legal Adviser and Acting Legal Adviser, in which last capacity he was the chief lawyer of the Department and the principle international lawyer for the United States Government. Thereafter, he rejoined White & Case LLP, co-founding its Washington, DC office, where his practice, originally concentrated in the litigation of administrative and public law cases, came to be comprised almost exclusively of substantial international arbitrations. Judge Brower has served also as Deputy Special Counsellor to the President of the United States (with sub-Cabinet rank as Deputy Assistant to the President), a Judge ad hoc of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, as a member of the Register of Experts of the United Nations Compensation Commission in Geneva (UNCC) and as a member of the Panel of Arbitrators of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID). He previously has represented various governments in proceedings before the ICJ and is a member of the panels of arbitrators of a number of arbitral institutions around the world.

Judge Brower has served as President of the American Society of International Law (ASIL), Governor of the American Bar Association (ABA), Chair of the Institute for Transnational Arbitration (ITA) and on the Executive Council of the International Law Association (ILA). He has published and spoken around the world on international law and international dispute resolution. In addition to his position at the George Washington University Law School, he has been a Visiting Fellow at Cambridge University several times. In 2009, he was awarded ASIL’s prestigious Manley O. Hudson Medal for “pre-eminent scholarship and achievement in international law … without regard to nationality”. In 2010, Judge Brower received the Stefan A. Riesenfeld Award from the University of California’s Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall) in recognition of “his outstanding achievements and contributions in the field of international law”. In 2013, he received both the Lifetime Achievement Award of the ABA’s Section of International Law and the Pat Murphy Award of the ITA “For Exceptional Civic Contributions and Extraordinary Professional Achievements in International Arbitration”. In 2015, he became the fourth recipient of the Global Arbitration Review’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Judge Brower is fluent in French, Dutch and German, in the latter of which he is bi-lingual. 


BA, Harvard College; JD, Harvard Law School