Alexis Mourre
President of the ICC International Court of Arbitration

It is with immense sadness that we learnt of the passing, on 20 February 2018, of our friend and colleague David Caron. An academic and legal scholar of universal reputation, David served as President of the American Society of International Law (ASIL) and of the Institute for Transnational Arbitration. He also was a distinguished member of the Hague Academy of International Law and the Max Planck Institute.

David was a professor at Berkeley from 1987 until 2013, where is remembered for his teaching skills, his high academic standards and his kind and generous demeanor. In 2013, he became dean at Dickson Poon School of Law at King’s College in London where he continued as a professor after leaving the deanship in 2016, while maintaining his emeritus status at Berkeley.

David D. Caron

His contribution to the field of international law was acknowledged in 2000 by the Stefan A. Riesenfeld Award of the University of California. ASIL president Lucinda A. Low rightly characterises David as a true citizen of the world, and signals that ‘David’s intellectual passions and professional work as a practitioner, adjudicator and scholar focused on two major strands: dispute resolution and environmental protection’. David was a noted expert in the law of the sea as co-director of the Law of the Sea Institute. In addition to leading textbooks on the UNCITRAL Arbitration Rules, he authored seminal publications on environmental and global issues, and Investor-State arbitration.

David was also an active judge and arbitrator, sitting at the International Court of Justice, the Iran-US Claims Tribunal, as well as arbitrator in investor-state and commercial disputes under almost all institutional rules, including of course those of ICC. There was always something to learn from seeing David arbitrate. He had a unique ability to immediately go to the essentials of each case and to present the most complicated issues in the simplest and clearest terms.

David displayed in his early years his unique human generosity and courage as a salvage diver in the U.S. Coast Guard. He was an intellectual as much as a man of action, a man of rough seas and a producer of novel ideas. His passing is an irreparable loss to the entire arbitration community.

He is survived by his wife, Susan, his son and daughter, Peter and Marina, and their extended family in the United States, to whom we extend our deepest condolences.

Information about tributes and other events in commemoration of David D. Caron may be obtained from http://www.davidcaron.life