Photo of Marney Cheek

Marney Cheek

Marney Cheek co-chairs Covington's International Arbitration and Disputes practice and has advised companies, non-governmental organizations, and governments on high-stakes international disputes and legal strategy for more than 20 years.

Marney serves as both counsel and advocate before numerous international arbitral tribunals and courts, including the International Court of Justice and major arbitral institutions such as the AAA, ICSID, PCA, and SIAC. She represents clients in complex international business disputes, having successfully defended a client in a $1.8 billion claim filed by a collaboration partner. Ms. Cheek serves as both counsel and arbitrator in numerous investment treaty arbitrations. She is an expert on public international law and currently represents the Government of Ukraine in its landmark cases before the International Court of Justice adverse to the Russian Federation, including Allegations of Genocide under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Ukraine v. Russian Federation). In addition to leading complex investment treaty and international commercial disputes under the rules of major arbitral institutions, Marney routinely advises clients on public international law matters and issues arising under numerous multilateral treaties. She also is at the forefront of business and human rights disputes, having represented global labor unions in the first binding arbitration brought under a business and human rights compact, the Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety.

Drawing upon her experience as Associate General Counsel at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, Marney routinely counsels clients on international trade matters and is a member of the roster of arbitrators for several U.S. free trade agreements. Her pro bono work includes representation of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, among other matters.

Marney is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and serves as a Vice President of the American Society of International Law. She has previously taught investment law at Columbia University School of Law. She is recognized as an “extraordinarily thoughtful” and “creative” lawyer with a “wealth of knowledge” on international law matters in Chambers and Legal 500.

Note: This post is the third in a series of posts on the final text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) by Covington’s International and Public Policy lawyers.  The final TPP text, which was released on November 5, 2015, is available here.  TPP is not expected to enter into force
Continue Reading What’s New in the TPP’s Intellectual Property Chapter

Note: This post is the second in a series of posts on the final text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) by Covington’s International and Public Policy lawyers.  The final TPP text, which was released on November 5, 2015, is available here.  TPP is not expected to enter into force
Continue Reading The Trans-Pacific Partnership Investment Chapter: Maintaining Important Protections for U.S. Investors Overseas

Almost all of the more than 3,000 bilateral investment treaties (BITs) in existence offer foreign investors the protection of “fair and equitable treatment” under international law.  India’s new draft model BIT does not.  In place of the well-established standard of protection, which has been interpreted and applied in hundreds of
Continue Reading India’s Investment Treaties – Will the Government Reject a Core Standard of Investment Protection?

Recent calls by anti-trade groups to abandon investor-state arbitration (often referred to as “investor-state dispute settlement,” or ISDS) ignore the modern reality of the global economy and conjure images of Chicken Little’s warnings that the sky is falling. Investment flows exceeded $1.45 trillion globally in 2013. Of the billions of
Continue Reading Congress: Don’t dismiss neutral dispute settlement for US investors

The United States and the European Union are currently negotiating a comprehensive, high standard trade agreement.  Launched in 2013, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) seeks to unlock economic growth by further opening the US and EU markets, addressing regulatory barriers that result in significant costs to companies operating
Continue Reading A Critical Opportunity to Promote Gold Standard Investment Protections

This post originally appeared on Investment Policy Central.

A U.S.-China bilateral investment treaty (BIT) will serve as the cornerstone for the bilateral economic relationship between these two economic powerhouses for years to come.  It puts in place important rules that protect U.S. investors against discrimination and arbitrary treatment, with
Continue Reading Why A U.S.-China Bilateral Investment Treaty Matters