David and I were friends for over 30 years. On the professional side, I followed him as Chair of the Institute for Transnational Arbitration and he followed me as President of the American Society for International Law. We planned many symposia and programs together. One of the things we agreed ...

It has become a familiar trope to recite that we live in an era marked by an unprecedented growth in international courts and tribunals. Besides its empiricist overtones and familiar focus on the evolution of international law, this ritualized incantation serves to signal the increased importance of international lawyers. An ...

David D. Caron’s scholarship on the legitimacy of international law and international institutions was ground-breaking, expansive in its reach and its impact, and elegant in its analysis, form, and structure. The questions of legitimacy that he addressed in his writing represent some of the most urgent and important matters of ...

In his lectures and scholarly writings, David Caron was fond of conjuring images. Last September, he opened a lecture in Geneva by recalling an inscription over an entrance to this law school. In his American Journal of International Law article on the 1899 Hague Peace Conference, he described a rather ...

“ISDS,” as many of you may know, stands for “Investor-State Dispute Settlement,” and refers to the current system of ad hoc arbitration that foreign investors and host States use to resolve their investment disputes. Because the system is ad hoc—in other words, the disputing parties pick the arbitrators and the ...

When it came to almost any emerging issue in international law, Professor Caron was at the forefront and, in many cases, had already written about it. We saw this with issues ranging from the minimum standard of treatment in Glamis Gold v. United States of America, in which he served ...

The theme of Berkeley Law’s September 2018 Symposium honoring the memory of Professor David Caron was “The Elegance of International Law.” This intriguing theme was taken from David’s opening address, entitled “Confronting Complexity, Valuing Elegance,” at the Annual Meeting of the American Society of International Law in April 2012. His ...

The view that participation by the respondent state enhances the perceived legitimacy of international judicial or arbitral proceedings may play a significant role in a decision not to participate. Such a decision may be prompted by political rather than legal considerations. The object of nonparticipation may be to facilitate exercise ...