Since October 2013, Judge Rosemary Barkett has served as a Judge on the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal in The Hague. Immediately prior to joining the Tribunal, Judge Barkett served for two decades as a Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, to which she was nominated by President William J. Clinton. During her 30-year judicial career beginning in 1979, Judge Barkett authored thousands of opinions, many landmark opinions in areas of intellectual property, antitrust, contract product liability, breach of contract, employer-employee relations, land condemnation, racketeering and corruption, banks and banking regulations, as well as constitutional law, labor law, and criminal appeals.
In 2016, Judge Barkett was elected as Honorary President of the American Society of International Law. In 2015, President Barack Obama appointed Judge Barkett to the Panel of Conciliators for the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes.
Judge Barkett’s judicial career began in 1979 when Florida’s Governor appointed her as a state trial court judge, later elevating her in 1984 to the state’s intermediate appellate court, before ultimately appointing her to the Florida Supreme Court, making her the first woman Justice in the Florida Supreme Court’s history. On July 1, 1992, her colleagues elected her as Florida’s first woman Chief Justice.
Judge Barkett has pursued her interests in both jurisprudence and judicial education, serving on the faculty of Florida’s Judicial College, the National Judicial College, The Institute of Judicial Administration’s New Appellate Judge Seminar, Aspen Institute’s Justice and Society Seminars, and various other Appellate Judges Seminars and law courses. She has taught international law seminars on Constitutionalism and Human Rights as well as Comparative Constitutions with Professor Louis Henkin at Columbia Law School. In addition, she has lectured in Kuwait, Dubai, Qatar, Syria, Turkey, Algeria, China, Haiti, Kyrgyzstan, Mexico, Russia, Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco on various substantive and procedural topics as well as on matters pertaining to court administration. Several of these seminars were in conjunction with her service on the Board of the ABA’s Rule of Law Initiative and on its Committee on the Middle East and North Africa Division. In addition, Judge Barkett has recently taught at the University of Miami’s International Master’s Programme.