Prof. Fred Soons studied law at Utrecht University, The Netherlands, followed by postgraduate studies in international law at the University of Washington (Seattle, USA) and Cambridge University (UK). He obtained a PhD-degree at Utrecht University in 1982 with a thesis on the international legal regime of marine scientific research.

After having served from 1976 in various legal and policy positions as a civil servant at the Netherlands Ministry of Transport, Water Management and Public Works he became professor of public international law and director of the Netherlands Institute for the Law of the Sea (NILOS) at Utrecht University in 1987. During 1995-1998 he was dean of the Faculty of Law. He retired from the university in 2014. Between 2006 and 2018 he also served as adjunct professor of international law at the University of Curacao.

He was, inter alia, president of the Netherlands Society of International Law, Director of Studies of the International Law Association (ILA), member and chairman of the Jury for the Hague Prize for International Law, chairman of the Scientific Advisory Council of the Netherlands Defense Academy, and member and chairman of the Standing Advisory Committee on Public International Law of the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 2015 he served on the Evaluation Commission on the constitutional status of the Caribbean islands of Bonaire, Saba and Sint Eustatius

Currently he serves, inter alia, as member of the Advisory Body of Experts on the Law of the Sea of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC/ABE-LOS).

As counsel and arbitrator he is and has been involved in international litigation at the International Court of Justice, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea and inter-State arbitral tribunals. He is a member of the Institut de droit international.