Originally from World Arbitration And Mediation Review (WAMR)

When I was a law student, I served as President of the International Law Students Association. It was a particularly rigorous selection process: I seem to recall raising my hand in a crowded room. Because of this position, it came to pass that in the fall of 1982 I attended ex officio the midyear meeting of the Executive Council of the American Society of International Law. How exciting to be at Tillar House with the giants of international law, to hear them speak one by one. The afternoon passed, it was near the end of the meeting. It was one of those early fall days when the heat and humidity of Washington, D.C. comes back one more time. The topic was finances.

Charles N. Brower rose to speak. I had never met him before, he then being a partner of White & Case. He was wearing a threepiece wool suit, dark with a pin stripe, a collar pin glinted in the afternoon light. With the added heat of so many people huddled together on the second floor of Tillar House, my guess was that everyone was ready to conclude the meeting as soon as possible. But when Charles N. Brower spoke, it was as though a person of a different order than those before had appeared. Indeed, it was an order of magnitude different from all before: prepared, persuasive, concise, effective, leading, and inspiring in every word.