David Caron is the C. William Maxeiner Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of California at Berkeley. He currently serves as President-Elect of the American Society of International Law, Co-Director of the Law of the Sea Institute, and as a member of the Board of Editors of the American Journal of International Law. He presently serves also as a member of the U.S. Department of State Advisory Committee on Public International Law and of the Investment Subcommittee of U.S. Secretary of State's Advisory Committee on International Economic Policy. He is a member of the Bars of the State of California and of England and Wales, and is a Barrister with Chambers at 20 Essex Street.
David Caron has served as arbitrator, lead counsel and expert in both private and public international arbitral proceedings. He is included as a leading international arbitrator from the United States in Chambers USA, The International Who's Who of Commercial Arbitration and in Who's Who Legal, California (since 2007). He served as Chair of the Advisory Board for the Institute of Transnational Arbitration of the Center for American and International Law from 2005 to 2009, is a founding fellow of the College of Commercial Arbitrators and is a Co-Editor of the World Arbitration and Mediation Review. Professor Caron is a member of the roster of arbitrators for International Centre for Dispute Resolution ("ICDR"), China International Economic and Trade Arbitration Commission ("CIETAC"), and the Peruvian Chamber of Commerce, and has served as an arbitrator in International Chamber of Commerce ("ICC"), International Centre for Dispute Resolution ("ICDR"), International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes ("ICSID") and United Nations Commission on International Trade Law ("UNCITRAL") Rules ad hoc arbitrations.
Professor Caron recently served as a member of the NAFTA Chapter 11 Arbitration Panels in the matters of Glamis Gold, Ltd. v. United States of America (Award 2009) and Cargill, Inc. v. United Mexican States (Award 2009). From 1996 to 2003, he served as a Commissioner with the Precedent Panel (E2) of the United Nations Compensation Commission in Geneva resolving claims arising out of the 1990 Gulf War. Over a series of nine installments, the E(2) Panel addressed several thousand corporate claims in the construction, insurance, banking, transportation, export, tourist and aviation sectors. He also served as the U.S.-appointed Member of the Property Claims Commission established under the German Forced Labor Settlement in 2000-2001. In 2004-2005, Professor Caron served as lead counsel for the Government of Ethiopia in a set of matters before the Eritrea - Ethiopia Claims Commission. F rom 2002 to 2006, he served as President of the ICSID Tribunal in the matter of Aguas del Tunari v. The Republic of Bolivia. He also served as Counsel to the Defender of the Fund for the Marshall Islands Nuclear Claims Tribunal in the mid 1990s, and have provided legal counsel to various Governments.
Professor Caron attended the United States Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut, graduating with High Honors with emphases in Physics and Political Science and as Commander of the Corp of Cadets in 1974. He served first in the Arctic as the Navigator and Salvage Diving Officer aboard the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Polar Star, and second in San Francisco as the Assistant Chief of the Marine Environmental Protection for California. He received the Coast Guard's Achievement Medal and resigned from the service with the rank of Lieutenant in 1979.
Professor Caron was named a Fulbright Scholar to the United Kingdom in 1979 and attended the University of Wales where he received a Masters' degree in Marine Law and Policy. Professor Caron began his law studies in 1980 at the University of California at Berkeley graduating Order of the Coif in 1983. During his study of the law, he began his close relationship with Professor Stefan Albrecht Riesenfeld serving both as his Research and Teaching Assistant. He also was elected Editor in Chief of Ecology Law Quarterly.
Following graduation from Berkeley, Professor Caron served as a legal assistant to Judges Charles N. Brower and Richard M. Mosk at the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal in The Hague. While in The Hague, Professor Caron began his association with The Hague Academy of International Law becoming the 25 th American to receive its Diploma and with the University of Leiden where he received his Doctorate in Law for a dissertation addressing the Iran - United States Claims Tribunal and the evolving structure of international dispute resolution. He thereupon served as a Senior Research Fellow with the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public and International Law in Heidelberg and thereafter practiced with the San Francisco firm of Pillsbury Madison & Sutro before joining the law faculty at the University of California at Berkeley in the Fall of 1987. Professor Caron's scholarship covers many aspects of international law and organization, with the corpus of work focusing on public and private international dispute resolution, international courts and tribunals, the United Nations, the law of the sea, international environmental law and general theory of international law.
Professor Caron has been a visiting professor at Cornell Law School (1990), and Hastings College of the Law (1996). He has also served as Director of Studies (1987) and Director of Research (1995) at the Hague Academy of International Law. In 1991, he received the Deák prize of the American Society of International Law for outstanding scholarship by a younger scholar. In 2000, he received the Stefan A. Riesenfeld Award of the University of California for outstanding achievement and contribution to the field of international law. In 2006, he served as a member of the Faculty in the Public International Law Session of the Hague Academy of International Law.
Professor Caron is active in public service. In addition to the affiliations above, he has served as Chair, International Law Section, Association of American Law Schools.
