Chubarian was born on July 6, 1888, in the Armenian village of Topdi, located in the region of Nor Nakhichevan (Rostov-on-the Don, Northern Caucasus). After receiving his education at Nor Nakhichevan, he studied law at the University of Yaroslavl, an institution north of Moscow, and also graduated from the School of History at the University of Moscow. He returned to Rostov-on-the-Don in 1913 and worked as a lawyer. At the same time, he dabbled as a journalist.
After the sovietization of Armenia, Chubarian moved permanently to Yerevan. He was the deputy commissar (minister) of Justice from 1920-1924 in the government of Soviet Armenia. As such, he supervised the work of creating, codifying, and publishing the corpus of law of the republic, including the Constitution of 1922 (replaced in 1936), the Codes of Criminal Procedure and Territory, the laws on the creation of courts and others, and he personally drafted various such laws.
He became a professor at Yerevan State University in 1920, where he taught until the ominous year 1937. Like his brother Yeghia, a Communist activist and editor, he was subject to Stalinist repression and exiled. All his works were destroyed, but unlike his brother, who died in 1937, he was able to survive exile. He was rehabilitated in 1956 and continued working at the university. From 1957-1962 he gave courses of state law, Soviet law, Soviet constitutional law, criminal procedure, criminal law, and rhetorical art.
Chubarian was well-versed in philosophical and socio-political thinking, and well-aware of Armenian history, and history of literature and art. He made an important contribution to the creation of scholarly terminology in Armenian law, becoming a co-author of the first bilingual (Russian-Armenian) law dictionary (1924). He wrote various works and important scholarly articles published in Armenian periodicals from the 1910s to the 1930s.
In 1961, he earned the title of Emeritus Worker of Science of Soviet Armenia. Grigor Chubarian passed away at the age of seventy-four, on September 6, 1962, in Yerevan. His bust has been installed at the opening hall of the central building of Yerevan State University, symbolizing his role in the establishment and development of this institution. He was the father of sculptor Ghukas Chubarian (1923-2009), famous for the statue of Mesrop Mashtots and Koriun at the front of the Matenadaran, among others, and painter Anoush Chubarian.
