Pieter H.F. Bekker
Lecturer-in-Law
| Office: |
Crowell & Moring LLP
590 Madison Avenue, 20th Floor
New York NY 10022-2524
|
| Tel: |
212.895.4305 |
| Fax: |
212.895.4201 |
| Email: |
pbekker@crowell.com |
Dr. Pieter Bekker is Crowell & Moring’s head of public international law and leads the firm’s International Dispute Resolution practice group in the New York office. He is a member of Columbia Law School’s adjunct faculty, teaching international investment law and arbitration.
Dr. Bekker focuses his practice on international dispute risk management and resolution (especially arbitration) and advice on public international law, in which he holds a doctorate. In international arbitration matters, he draws upon a particularly rich background: he was educated and has practiced, in both Europe and the United States, in civil law, common law and public international law, the legal systems on which international arbitral law and procedure are based.
Dr. Bekker has experience with a variety of arbitration procedures, including those of the World Bank's International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) and its Additional Facility, the International Court of Arbitration of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), the American Arbitration Association (AAA) (he is listed on its Panel of International Arbitrators), the Cairo Regional Centre for International Commercial Arbitration, the Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre, and arbitrations based on the rules of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL). He regularly counsels clients in the drafting of arbitration clauses for international contracts.
Dr. Bekker also advises private and public sector clients on a wide range of issues relating to private and public international law, including issues of jurisdiction, immunity, enforcement, expropriation, environmental law, the law of the sea, treaty law, and State responsibility. He has particular experience in matters involving sovereign parties, including States, state-owned entities, and international organizations before both domestic and international courts and tribunals. For example, he represented the state-owned oil company of a Middle Eastern country in its claims against Iraq before the United Nations Compensation Commission. He has negotiated treaties for foreign governments in high-stakes cases. For example, he assisted Ukraine in drafting and negotiating treaties with Israel and Russia settling legal issues arising from the accidental shooting down of a Russian airliner over the Black Sea in 2001. He has been a co-author with, and has served as legal adviser to, two former prime ministers of The Netherlands.
A native of The Netherlands, Dr. Bekker was in private practice in Amsterdam before serving for nearly three years as a staff lawyer in the Registry of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the principal judicial organ of the United Nations located in The Hague. He has been involved in some 20 ICJ cases between sovereign States and served as Senior Counsel in the most recently completed ICJ advisory proceeding alongside the professors of international law of Oxford and Cambridge. He has also advised clients in pro bono matters arising under international law, such as genocide and other human rights issues.
Dr. Bekker has also represented a variety of corporate clients in cross-border commercial transactions—especially in the maritime and oil & gas industries—in Brazil, the Caribbean, China, Indonesia, Japan, Venezuela, and various countries in the Middle East and Europe. He has represented Intergen, one of the world’s largest independent power project developers, and the International Finance Corporation and Inter-American Development Bank in relation to project financings in Asia and South America.
Dr. Bekker is a 2005 recipient of the Burton Award for Legal Achievement (Excellence in Legal Writing). He has been selected by his peers as a New York "Super Lawyer" in the International and Alternative Dispute Resolution categories continuously since 2006. He was also named to the Who's Who in Public International Law in 2007.
Dr. Bekker has commented on international law topics on radio and television in the United States and Europe. He has served as a commentator on the trial of Saddam Hussein for FOX News TV and has been featured in the New York Law Journal, The Times (London) (as Lawyer of the Week), the Wall Street Journal, and the Dutch magazine Quote.
He earned his Master of Laws degree from Harvard Law School on a Fulbright grant, graduating in President Obama’s Class. He earned his Dutch Civil Law degree and his Ph.D. degree in international law from Leiden University in The Netherlands.
Dr. Bekker is a member of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York (United Nations and Arbitration Committees member); the American Bar Association's Section of International Law (former chair, International Courts Committee); the American Society of International Law (Executive Council member); the Institute for Transnational Arbitration (Board of Reporters member); and the American and Dutch Branches of the International Law Association (Chair, Committee on Intergovernmental Settlement of Disputes).
His working languages are English, Dutch, German, and French. He also has a basic understanding of Spanish.
Education
Leiden University, The Netherlands, Ph.D., 1994
Harvard Law School, LL.M., 1991 (Fulbright grant)
Leiden University, The Netherlands, J.D. (equiv.), 1991
Affiliations
Admitted to practice: New York
Publications
“The Legal Position of Intergovernmental Organizations – A Functional Necessity Analysis of Their Legal Status and Immunities” (1994) (Martinus Nijhoff Publishers/T.M.C. Asser Instituut, ISBN 0-7923-2904-X) (Foreword by ICJ President Sir Robert Jennings) (doctoral thesis) (mentioned as one of seven standard immunity works in a book review in 99 American Journal of International Law 730, n. 1 (2005)). Author: Pieter H.F. Bekker
“World Court Decisions at the Turn of the Millennium (1997-2001)” (2002) (Kluwer Law International, ISBN 90-411-1791-1) (Foreword by ICJ President Stephen Schwebel). Author: Peter H.F. Bekker
“Commentaries on World Court Decisions (1987-1996)” (1998) (Kluwer Law International, ISBN 90-411-0558-1) (Foreword by Prof. Abram Chayes). Editor & principal author: Pieter H.F. Bekker
Plus chapters in 11 books and over 100 articles and notes in: The American Journal of International Law (25 publications since 1993); Newsletter of The American Society of International Law; ASIL Insights; The International Lawyer; Leiden Journal of International Law; Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Journal; Stockholm Arbitration Report; Netherlands International Law Review; The Yale Journal of International Law; Cornell International Law Journal; International Law FORUM du droit international; Chinese Journal of International Law; ILSA Journal of International and Comparative Law; International Legal Materials; ABA International Law News; Project Finance International; Marshall Islands Report; American Diplomacy Magazine; Harvard Law Bulletin.
