Joan Donoghue is an arbitrator based in London. An esteemed public international lawyer with broad experience, Joan stepped down from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in 2024, where she was a Judge from 2010 to 2024, serving as President from 2021 to 2024.
Joan has also sat as a member or president of investor-state tribunals and annulment committees, and from 2016 to 2024 was a US designee to the ICSID Panel of Arbitrators.
Prior to joining the ICJ, Joan served in the US State Department for around 20 years, working on a broad range of issues – including regional affairs (Latin America and Africa), economic and business affairs, the law of the sea, the environment, and immunities law – ultimately serving as principal deputy legal advisor (the department’s most senior career attorney) from 2007–2010. Other prominent roles include service as the deputy general counsel of the US Treasury Department (1999–2000) and as general counsel in a major US financial services company (2003–2005).
She has taught courses in international law and international investment law at several law schools and within the training programme of the United Nations. Joan is a visiting professor in the law school at the University of California, Berkeley, and for the 2025/26 academic year will be the Arthur Goodhart visiting professor in legal science at the University of Cambridge.
Joan currently serves as honorary president of the American Society of International Law and as vice president of the British Institute of International and Comparative Law. Joan was also recently appointed as a judge of the Bahrain International Commercial Court.
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