Professor Chester Brown is Professor of International Law and International Arbitration at the Faculty of Law, University of Sydney, Australia; a Barrister at 7 Wentworth Selborne Chambers Sydney, and an Overseas Associate at Essex Court Chambers, London, and Maxwell Chambers, Singapore. He practices, teaches and researches in the fields of public international law, international arbitration, international investment law, private international law, international trade law, and general commercial matters. He has been nominated by the Governments of Australia, New Zealand, and Canada for election to the United Nations International Law Commission, with the election to take place in November 2016.
Professor Brown is currently acting in a number of investment claims, including acting as counsel for the Government of Australia in the claim brought by Philip Morris Asia Ltd under the Australia – Hong Kong bilateral investment treaty. He is also engaged in proceedings commenced by Timor-Leste against Australia before an ad hoc inter-State arbitral tribunal (Arbitration under the Timor Sea Treaty). He recently served as counsel for the Government of Australia in proceedings before the International Court of Justice (Questions Relating to the Seizure and Detention of Certain Documents and Data (Timor-Leste v Australia)), as counsel for the Government of Iran in proceedings before the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal (Case A/15 (II:A), Iran v United States), and as counsel for the Government of India in the claim brought by White Industries Australia Ltd under the Australia – India BIT.
Before joining the Faculty of Law in 2009, Professor Brown served as Assistant Legal Adviser at the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (2007–2009), and prior to this, he was a Senior Associate in the International Law and International Arbitration Group of Clifford Chance LLP, London (2004–2007). He was a Visiting Fellow at the British Institute of International and Comparative Law in 2006, a Visiting Scholar at Harvard Law School in 2011, and a Herbert Smith Freehills Visiting Professor at the University of Cambridge in 2013. He is a Research Consultant at the Centre for International Law at the National University of Singapore, and he co-teaches (with Professor David Williams QC) International Arbitration on the LLM programme at the University of Auckland.
Professor Brown is the author of A Common Law of International Adjudication (OUP, 2007), a major study dealing with the applicable procedure and remedies before international courts and tribunals, which was awarded the American Society of International Law’s Certificate of Merit. He is the co-editor of Evolution in Investment Treaty Law and Arbitration (CUP, 2011), which was awarded the OGEMID Award for ‘Book of the Year 2011’; co-author of The International Arbitration Act 1974: A Commentary (Lexis-Nexis Australia, 2011; 2nd edition, 2015); editor of Commentaries on Selected Model Investment Treaties (OUP, 2013); and author or co-author of more than 60 journal articles, book chapters, and notes. He serves as Associate Editor (Notes) of the ICSID Review – Foreign Investment Law Journal, and is the Australia and New Zealand reporter for the International Law Reports.
Professor Brown has been appointed as presiding arbitrator in an arbitration governed by the Singapore International Arbitration Centre Rules of Arbitration. He is a member of the Academic Council of the Institute for Transnational Arbitration, a Panel Member of the Kuala Lumpur Regional Centre for Arbitration, and a Fellow of the Australian Centre for International Commercial Arbitration. He is also a member of the American Society of International Law, the European Society of International Law, the Australian and New Zealand Society of International Law (of which he co-chairs the International Economic Law Interest Group), the International Law Association, and the Oxford-Australia Scholarships Committee.
Professor Brown was educated at the Universities of Melbourne, Oxford, and Cambridge. He speaks German and French.