Frank Berman
British diplomat and judge
Sir Franklin Delow Berman, (born 23 December 1939) is a British barrister and leading authority in international law. He was Legal Adviser to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office from 1991 to 1999.
Background and education
Berman was born in South Africa. He was educated at Rondebosch Boys' High School, the University of Cape Town (BA in Mathematics 1959, BSc 1960), and Wadham College, Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar, and took first class honours in Jurisprudence. He then undertook doctoral work at Nuffield College, Oxford, where he held a studentship.
Diplomatic Service
Berman joined Her Majesty's Diplomatic Service in 1965, and was called to the bar of Middle Temple in 1966. He was assistant legal advisor for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office from 1965 to 1971, legal advisor to the British Military Government of Berlin from 1971 to 1972, legal adviser at the British Embassy, Bonn, from 1972 to 1974. He was a legal counsellor for the FCO from 1974/5–82, counsellor for the UK Mission to the United Nations from 1982 to 1985. He became deputy legal adviser in 1988 and served as Legal Adviser to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office from 1991 to 1999. He was made an honorary Queen's Counsel in 1992.
The public source identifies “Frank Berman” as british diplomat and judge. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Frank, Berman and British.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5491305. VIAF identifies the subject as 233149294077180520132. The Library of Congress control number is no2006097191. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1939, 1991, 1999 and 1959.
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This entry incorporates text from “Frank Berman” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.