Summary
Mr. Rovine has been serving as an arbitrator in international cases under ICSID, NAFTA, PCA and AAA/ICDR since his retirement from the law firm of Baker & McKenzie as of July 1, 2005. He is also the Director of the annual Conference on International Arbitration and Mediation at Fordham Law School and is an Adjunct Professor of Law at Fordham Law School. He is the Editor of the annual volume Contemporary Issues in International Arbitration and Mediation: The Fordham Papers, published by Martinus Nijhoff.
Mr. Rovine was President of the American Society of International Law (2000-2002) and the Chairman of the International Law Section of the American Bar Association (1985-1986). He was also a member of the Board of Editors of the American Journal of International Law (1977-1987), and has been a member of the Council on Foreign Relations since 1987. He was Chairman of the International Law Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York (ABCNY) (2009-2011), and is a member of the ABCNY International Commercial Disputes Committee. He is a member of the Arbitration Committee of the Center for Public Resources, and a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation. He also represented the ABCNY in the recently-completed revision of the UNCITRAL Arbitration Rules.
After joining Baker & McKenzie in 1983, Mr. Rovine represented many major clients in international arbitrations, including a large number of investor/state cases at the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal in the Hague and the UN Compensation Commission in Geneva. He also handled cases in international commercial arbitration before the International Chamber of Commerce in Paris, the American Arbitration Association in New York, the Stockholm Institute, ad hoc arbitrations, and related international litigation in U.S. Federal Courts.
Mr. Rovine handled as an advocate many claims for and against governments, including investment disputes with Iran and Iraq, and representation of the Government of Egypt in a major case against Iraq at the UN Compensation Commission.
Mr. Rovine’s arbitration and litigation private sector clients included Rockwell International, General Dynamics, Fluor Corporation, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu International, Touche Ross International, Combustion Engineering, John Brown Engineering, Nuclear Electric Insurance, Singer, and many others.
Prior to joining Baker & McKenzie in 1983, Mr. Rovine served in the Office of the Legal Adviser in the U.S. Department of State from 1972 to 1983. He established the Digest of United States Practice in International Law (1972-1974), and was then named Assistant Legal Adviser for Treaty Affairs (1975-1981). In that capacity he was responsible for the international law, constitutional law, and U.S. foreign relations law issues involved in many treaties, agreements, and legislation, including the Algiers Accords with Iran, the termination of the Mutual Defense Treaty with Taiwan, the Taiwan Relations Act, the Panama Canal Treaties, the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty, several human rights treaties, succession of states with respect to treaties, and the President’s treaty powers.
Mr. Rovine was then appointed the first United States Agent to the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal in the Hague from 1981 to 1983. In that capacity, and working with the Iranian Agent, European arbitrators and the Dutch Government, he helped establish the Tribunal, adapt the UNCITRAL Rules for the Tribunal, and helped develop all Tribunal administrative procedures, privileges and immunities, payment mechanisms, etc. Mr. Rovine then argued cases at the Tribunal on behalf of the U.S. Government against the Government of Iran.
Prior to his government service, Mr. Rovine served as Counsel at the International Court of Justice in the South-West Africa Cases against South Africa (representing Ethiopia and Liberia) and in the Namibia Advisory Opinion (representing the International League for the Rights of Man as amicus curiae). Both of these cases involved apartheid issues and practices in South Africa.