A Conversation on Judging International Justice featuring the Honorable Charles N. Brower

February 12, 2025 12:15 PM - 1:15 PM

Join us at an event based on Judge Brower’s book, Judging Iran: A Memoir of The Hague, the White House, and Life on the Front Line of International Justice, where he and Prof. Spain Bradley will discuss the wisdom, insights, and lessons from Judge Brower’s decades of experience. 

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A judge of the Iran–United States Claims Tribunal for four decades, Charles N. Brower is an internationally recognized leader in arbitration and has handled cases on six continents. With quick wit and a keen eye for adventure, he takes readers on a tour of his extraordinary career. 

As a young lawyer fresh from Harvard, Brower quickly made partner at a Wall Street firm. After just four months, however, he left the expected path to join the U.S. State Department, embarking on a career that put him in the thick of Cold War Europe and led to a lifelong focus on international law. 

Brower’s drive carried him to the heart of pressing issues, including globalization, governmental ethics, environmentalism, and human rights. At each stop, Brower encountered criminals and victims, advocates and miscreants, especially at the Iran–United States Claims Tribunal, where heated disagreements between judges once erupted into physical violence. His work at The Hague was interrupted only by his time as an advisor to President Ronald Reagan at the height of the Iran–Contra scandal, and Brower eventually became the most-appointed American judge ad hoc of the International Court of Justice. 

Judging Iran is a frank insider account of the highest echelons of international law. As an active judge to this day, Brower offers a nuanced history of modern arbitration between nations, from our earliest concept of international law to today’s efforts for justice. And, as a global citizen, he argues that the law is essential in our work for peace.

*books will available for purchase at the event with a book signing to follow in the Lincoln Alcove

Charles Brower

Sponsors: International & Comparative Law ProgramPromise Institute for Human Rights