Donald Francis Donovan

Mr. Donovan serves as Vice-President and a member of the Nominating Committee.  He served as Chair of the Program Committee for ICCA Montreal 2006 and ICCA Dublin 2008.  He has been a member of the Council since 1998.

General bio

Mr. Donovan is a partner in Debevoise & Plimpton LLP in New York, where he concentrates his practice in international disputes before courts in the United States, international arbitration tribunals, and international courts.  Mr. Donovan has argued international law, arbitration law, commercial law, and other issues before the International Court of Justice (most recently in Avena and Other Mexican Nationals (Mexico v. U.S.), the US Supreme Court (most recently in Medellín v. Texas), other international courts, and federal and state courts throughout the United States.  He regularly conducts arbitrations in venues throughout the world under the auspices of the world’s leading arbitration institutions, and he regularly sits as arbitrator in international cases, including under the auspices of the ICC, the ICDR, and ICSID.

Mr. Donovan is a former Vice-President of the American Society of International Law.  Among other positions, he served from 2000-2005 as Chair of the Institute for Transnational Arbitration and from 2000-2003 as Chair of the Arbitration Committee of the U.S. Council for International Business (the US National Committee for the ICC International Court of Arbitration). Board of Directors, Human Rights First.  He served as Program Co-Chair of the Centennial Meeting of the American Society of International Law, which took place in Washington, D.C. in March 2006 and as Program Chair of the XIVth Congress of the International Council for Commercial Arbitration (ICCA) in Montreal in June 2006 and of its XVth Congress in Dublin in June 2008.

Mr. Donovan teaches international arbitration at New York University School of Law, is a Visiting Professor at the Centre for Commercial Law, Queen Mary University of London, and serves on the Board of Trustees of the Foundation for International Arbitration Advocacy and on the Advisory Board of the Geneva Master in International Dispute Settlement Program at The Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, both in Geneva.

Awards, Nominations and Special roles

Awarded first “Chambers Award of Excellence in International Arbitration,” with his partner David W. Rivkin (June 2006).

Awarded Premio Nacional de Jurisprudencia by the Mexican Bar Association, the first non-Mexican so honored (December 2006).