Judge Abedian, currently a Member of the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal at The Hague, is a former Justice of the Iranian Supreme Court.
He joined the Iranian Judiciary in 1988 as a Judge of the Tehran Civil Courts and was promoted to Presiding Judge in the same courts in 1990. In 2001, he was appointed to the Iranian Supreme Court, serving there until 2009 when he resigned to take up his present position. He also served as senior legal adviser to the Minister of Justice on civil matters from 1998-2002. During his judicial career, he dealt mainly with contractual and commercial cases (both domestic and international), including arbitration. In a separate capacity from 2002-2009, he also presided over a seven-member panel of arbitration, which dealt with over 30 cases arising from disputes related to privatization in the Iranian economy. He is also acting as an arbitrator in some ad-hoc and institutional international commercial and investor-state arbitrations.
Having received his LLB and LLM in private law, both with distinction, from Tehran University in 1987 and 1991 respectively, he went on to obtain a Ph.D. in Law from the University of Bristol in the U.K. in 1997
Judge Abedian has also been an assistant professor of private law, head of the Law Department of Tehran Azad University (1998-1999), and a visiting professor of law at various Iranian universities, lecturing, inter alia, on comparative contract law, remedies for breach of contract, international sale of goods, and international commercial arbitration. He has also conducted various advanced courses and seminars for Iranian judges.
He has written extensively on various subjects, which writings include books and articles.
