Draft:Jamal Seifi

Jamal Seifi
Jamal Seifi speaking at the Humanities House of Thinkers in Tehran, Iran, 2022
Born	1954 (age 71–72)
Occupations	Jurist, academic and arbitrator

Jamal Seifi (born 1954) is an Iranian jurist, academic, and arbitrator specializing in public international law, international commercial arbitration, and investment arbitration. He has served as a member of the Iran–United States Claims Tribunal in The Hague since September 2009.

Early life and education

Seifi was born in Iran in 1954. He studied law at the National University of Iran, now known as Shahid Beheshti University, where he received a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) with distinction in 1978.

He subsequently continued his studies in the United Kingdom at the University of Hull. He received a Master of Laws (LLM) in international law in 1986 and completed a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in international law and arbitration in 1990.

Judicial and legal career

Seifi began his legal career in the Iranian judiciary as a trainee in late 1977 and served as a domestic judge between 1979 and 1985. In 1992, he was admitted to the Iranian Central Bar Association.

He subsequently established the law firm Jamal Seifi & Associates, where he practiced in the fields of international arbitration and commercial law. During his private practice, he acted as counsel and as an arbitrator in domestic and international disputes, including as sole arbitrator, co-arbitrator, and presiding arbitrator.

In September 2009, Seifi was appointed as a member of the Iran–United States Claims Tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, where he was assigned to Chamber Three. Following his appointment, he took leave from his private legal practice.

In addition to his work at the Tribunal, Seifi has held positions and participated in activities within other international legal institutions. He was a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration from 2006 to 2016.

He has also participated in drafting work relating to arbitration procedures, including the Permanent Court of Arbitration's Optional Rules of Arbitration of 2012 and the Optional Protocol on Emergency Interim Measures of 2022.

Seifi has also served as a judge ad hoc in proceedings before the International Court of Justice.

Academic career

Seifi has held academic positions in international law and arbitration at universities in Iran, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Canada.

At Shahid Beheshti University in Iran, he began his academic career in 1991 and served as an Associate Professor of Law before taking leave following his appointment to the Iran–United States Claims Tribunal in 2009.

At the University of Hull, Seifi lectured in international law between 1989 and 1991. He later returned as a Visiting Professor during the 1999 and 2000 academic terms, teaching international commercial arbitration.

From 2014 to 2021, Seifi was associated with Tilburg University in the Netherlands, where he taught international arbitration law. In 2015, he was appointed to the Professorial Chair of Global Law and subsequently served as a Distinguished Visiting Professor from 2016 to 2021.

He was also appointed as an Adjunct Professor with the Graduate Faculty of Law at the University of Victoria in Canada. His appointments included the periods from 2017 to 2020 and from 2021 to 2024, during which he was involved primarily in the supervision of doctoral candidates.

Seifi has served on the editorial boards of several legal publications, including the Asian Yearbook of International Law, the Iranian Journal of Legal Research, and the Journal of International Law.

Publications

Seifi has published in English and Persian on subjects including state responsibility, the law of treaties, public international law, arbitration, and international dispute settlement.

Books

His publications include:

• The Law of State Responsibility (Persian), published in several editions between 2021 and 2023.
• The Law of State Succession (Persian), published in editions in 2022 and 2023.
• Selected Writings on International Law, Adjudication and Arbitration, Volumes I and II (2023–2024), a collection of writings on international law, arbitration, and international dispute resolution.

Selected articles and contributions

Seifi's publications include:

• "Procedural Remedies Against Awards of Iran-United States Claims Tribunal," Arbitration International (1992).
• "The New International Commercial Arbitration Act of Iran," Journal of International Arbitration (1998).
• "State Responsibility for Failure to Enforce Iran-United States Claims Tribunal Awards," Journal of International Arbitration (1999).
• "The Legality of Truncated Arbitral Tribunals," Journal of International Arbitration (2000).
• "Peremptory Norms and the Jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice." In The International Legal Order: Current Needs and Possible Responses (2017). Brill.
• "Legitimacy of Investor-State Arbitration: Addressing Development Bias Among International Arbitrators." In Freya Baetens (ed.), Identity and Diversity on the International Bench: Who is the Judge? Oxford University Press (2020). ISBN 978-0-19-887075-3.
• "Globalization of International Arbitration: Trends and Implications." In Christoph Benicke and Stephan Huber (eds.), National, International, Transnational: Harmonischer Dreiklang im Recht (2020). ISBN 978-3-7694-1227-7.
• "General Observations on the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal and Its Contribution to the Development of International Arbitral Procedure," Iranian Journal of International and Comparative Law (2025).
• Seifi, Jamal; Javadi, Kamal. "Public-Private Arbitration in the Iranian Legal System." In The Comparative Constitutional Foundations of Private-Public Arbitration (2025). Oxford University Press.

He has also contributed to the Asian Yearbook of International Law (2014), and the Encyclopedia of International Arbitration, including work relating to arbitration in Iran. He was the Iran volume editor and the author of the introductory chapter and several entries in the Encyclopedia of Public International Law in Asia (Seokwoo Lee et al., Brill Nijhoff, 2021).

See also

• Iran–United States Claims Tribunal
• Permanent Court of Arbitration
• Shahid Beheshti University
• Jamal Seifi at ResearchGate
• Jamal Seifi at Google Scholar