Hon. Charles N. Brower - Judging Iran: A Memoir of The Hague, The White House, and Life on the Front Line of International Justice

Judge Browers Judging Iran delivers on its stated purpose: it tells a gripping story about the career of a highly esteemed international lawyer, and in the process lays out and defends, with sophistication, our contemporary system of international dispute settlement.

Sean D. Murphy, Manatt/Ahn Professor of International Law, George Washington University; Member, U.N. International Law Commission

This remarkable personal story of one of the greatest international law practitioners of our time presents international law in action. Charles Brower, leadership patron of the American Society of International Law, sat in at least 133 international cases as arbitrator or judge, including in three cases as judge ad hoc at the International Court of Justice. In addition, he acted in a number of cases as lead counsel, for both investors and governments. Having advised the State Department (including as its acting legal adviser for an extended period) and President Reagan at a critical moment of his presidency in early 1987, Browers book offers unique insights.

I recommend this memoir, elegantly written and highly readable, to all interested in better understanding the challenges besetting the settlement of international disputes, in particular to young lawyers aspiring to pursue a career in international litigation.

Peter Tomka, Judge and former President of the International Court of Justice

Charles Browers memoir vividly portrays the power of international justice and the inestimable value of an orderly dispute resolution system for international peace and security.

It narrates, in lucid and colorful language, how peaceful litigation, arbitration, and the judicial settlement of disputes have gradually triumphed, during the lifetime of the author, over gunboat diplomacy and the force of arms in relations between states.

Abdulqawi Yusuf, Judge and former President of the International Court of Justice

This book is memoir. It reflects the authors present recollections of experiences over time. Some names and characteristics have been changed, some events have been compressed, and some dialogue has been re-created.

Published by Disruption Books

New York, New York

www.disruptionbooks.com

Copyright 2023 by Charles N. Brower

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. Thank you for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of this book without express written permission from the copyright holder. For information, please contact the publisher at .

Distributed by Disruption Books

For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Disruption Books at .

Photo of Nixon and Brezhnev, June 19, 1973, reprinted courtesy of The New York Times

Cover images courtesy of the author and Shutterstock / Kiev.Victor

Cover and book design by Sheila Parr

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

Printed in the United States of America.

Print ISBN: 978-1-63331-070-4

eBook ISBN: 978-1-63331-055-1

First Edition

Dedicated to my father, Charles Hendrickson Brower, my earliest and longest mentor, who always had the right answer and believed in me

George W. Jaeger, my academic tutor, who counseled me the rest of his life

Lawrence (Larry) B. Morris, because he cared

John (Jack) R. Stevenson, who as The Legal Adviser launched my career

and David M. Abshire, who took me with him everywhere, ultimately to the White House.

And what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love mercy, and walk humbly with your God?

Micah 6:8

Still bearing fruit in old age; still remaining fresh and green.

Psalm 92:14

I began this book by contacting the legendary go-to lawyer for global leaders and celebrities seeking to publish books, Robert Bob Barnett of Williams & Connolly LLP in Washington, DC, who as a favor to a mutual friend took me under his wing. As I started this adventure I was already eighty-five years of age and so extremely busy still in winding down my arbitration practice and public duties that I literally had not the time to write the book all by myself and needed a collaborator. Through Bob I acquired a sensational one, A.J. Wilson.

Of A.J.s incredibly productive as well as wholly enjoyable collaboration with me I cannot say it better than did the New York Times best-selling author of Anatomy of Terror: From the Death of Bin Laden to the Rise of the Islamic State Ali Soufan: First and foremost, I must thank my collaborator throughout this project, A.J. Wilson, without whose intellect, persistence, and way with words this book would simply never have seen the light of day. His wife, Rachel Madan, deserves special mention for her forbearance for the long hours A.J. spent helping me make this book the best it could be.

I also am immensely indebted to Hugh Verrier, the longtime chair of White & Case LLP, the law firm with which I practiced for decades, for his generously volunteering to arrange, without cost to me, for me to be interviewed for some days at length by a professional writer, with everything videotaped and the entire interview transcribed, all of which material afforded A.J. a head start on our collaboration.

I owe A.J. double credit for having introduced me to the publisher of this volume, Disruption Books, led by a troika of skilled, strong, solid, and spectacularly professional women with each of whom it was a joy to work: Kris Pauls, the publisher, who at our first meeting spent as much time gracefully convincing me to publish with Disruption Books as I devoted to selling her on these memoirs, from which our contract quickly emerged; Alli Shapiro, the editorial and production director, and thereby my most frequent, and always welcome, interlocutor; and Janet Potter, the all-important marketing director. I could not possibly have had a better team to perfect and market this book. Those three, of course, were supported by a considerable supporting cast, in particular Sheila Parr, the books designer, who perforce spent the most time on this book of her cohort. To all of them I am eternally grateful.

It is traditional, also just and well deserved, to cite the importance of the support one has enjoyed from ones family, in my case throughout my life and career. My mother, who at age seventeen held two womens records in track, then graduated from college Phi Beta Kappa, was thoroughly dutiful in caring for her children when sick, helping us with our schoolwork as needed, and doing everything within her considerable power to inspire ambition in us and to prepare us in every way for life.

Since my two childrens mid- and later teenage years they have seen much less of me, and I of them, than would be regarded as normal. In law practice many years I was traveling abroad due to my international arbitration work not less than 25 percent of the time and up to 45 percent of the year. Then there were the twenty-one-and-a-half years I was resident in The Hague as an international judge and therewith a Member of the Diplomatic Corps. My daughter, Frederica Rica Amity, PhD, has lived way out in the western states of our country since she was just turning nineteen, and is currently in Yakima, Washington, on the faculty of a medical school. My son, Charles Chip H. Brower, II, spent three years in Moscow after graduating