THE AUTHOR:
Lokmen Kassim, LL.M. Candidate in Transnational Arbitration and Dispute Settlement (“TADS”) at Sciences Po
The TADS calendar this year opened with an intensive first week for the incoming class, featuring the 9th edition of the Brazil Arbitration Forum, held over two days at Sciences Po and at the International Chamber of Commerce (“ICC”). The Alumni Homecoming followed shortly after, on 12 September 2026, and has itself become something of a staple marking the rentrée. This year, the Alumni Homecoming carried particular significance, as it marked ten years of the TADS LL.M.
What might, in another year, have been simply another homecoming became instead an occasion to look back – both at the programme itself, and at the field it has, for a decade now, been training people to access. The room reflected that span: alumni from across the programme’s various years sat alongside incoming students only weeks into the course, a mix that gave the day much of its character.
The morning opened with an Ask Me Anything session (“AMA”) with Diego P. Fernández Arroyo, Director of the TADS LL.M. programme and a Professor at Sciences Po since 2010. Born in Argentina and holding a doctorate summa cum laude from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Professor Diego P. Fernández Arroyo’s own path, through academic posts in Argentina and Spain, research fellowships in Hamburg and Lausanne, and eventually Paris, reflects the same cosmopolitan career across jurisdictions that the programme trains its graduates for. That trajectory, and the institutional roles that have followed from it – from serving as President of the Curatorium of the Hague Academy of International Law to sitting as an arbitrator himself – set the tone for a day largely given over to alumni describing their own varied routes through the field.
During the AMA, Fernández Arroyo spoke candidly about how his own career had taken shape – not through a single plan followed in a straight line, but through a combination of professional opportunities, academic interests, and personal choices along the way. That candour set a fitting, and rather grounding, tone for the alumni who followed, each of whom was doing much the same: describing their own varied routes through the field.
The Substantive Law Retrospective
The first panel, moderated by Bruno Sousa Rodrigues, brought together Maria Mironova, Yoshie Concha Takeshita and Kateřina Palkovská to revisit the decisions that have reshaped the field over the programme’s ten years – not as a survey of case law for its own sake, but as a way of tracing how far, and in what direction, the discipline has actually moved.
Kateřina Palkovská addressed Achmea and its consequences for intra-EU investment arbitration, examining how the autonomy of the EU legal order has been asserted against the arbitral one, and the effects that assertion has produced well beyond the Union’s own borders – a reminder that jurisdictional battles fought within one legal order rarely stay contained to it. Maria Mironova turned to Belokon and Sorelec, tracing how the Paris Court of Appeal – subsequently endorsed by the Cour de cassation – extended the scrutiny exercised by State courts at the annulment stage to corruption allegations, including in instances where those allegations had not been raised before the arbitral tribunal. Taken together, these discussions pointed to a shift – however debated – in how much ground state courts have reclaimed at the margins of arbitral autonomy since the programme’s founding, a shift playing out against an increasingly tense broader geopolitical backdrop.
The Debate
The second panel, “Does the ‘Double-Hatting’ Ban Unjustly Restrict Party Autonomy and Stifle Diversity?”, moderated by Nusaybah Muti, set Paula Eiben-Działoszyńska against Tushar Behl on one of the more contested procedural developments in recent arbitration practice. They debated over the growing set of restrictions on arbitrators also acting as counsel, or vice versa, across parallel proceedings. The format gave the session an added edge – the audience voted before the debate began, and again once both sides had made their case, turning the panel into a live test of which arguments actually moved the room rather than simply a presentation of opposing views.
Among the arguments advanced in favour of the restrictions, the integrity of the process itself featured prominently. An arbitrator’s position in one case could be tainted, or perceived to be tainted, by an argument they are simultaneously advancing as counsel in other proceedings, or by proceedings involving the same or related parties, or overlapping facts. This creates, at minimum, an appearance problem. Appearances, in a field that depends heavily on the perceived neutrality of its arbitrators, matter a lot.
Against the restrictions, the debate turned to a question of access. In a field where the pool of highly qualified specialists remains small, particularly in investor-State disputes, a blanket ban might have the negative effect of narrowing, rather than widening, the range of voices able to build a practice in arbitration.
Careers on Trial
The third panel, moderated by Nicolás Gálvez Solís and featuring Lucas Macedo and Laragh Lee, turned from doctrine to trajectory, examining the paths available across the arbitral ecosystem and the moves between them.
Laragh Lee spoke on her transition from the ICC to private practice. Nicolás Gálvez Solís, moderating but also drawing on his own path, had gone the other way, from private practice into an institutional role at the ICC, clearly showing that career moves in both directions are possible between institutional work and private practice. Lucas Macedo’s story took a different shape altogether. A connection made over something with nothing to do with the profession eventually led him to his current position – proof, if anyone in the room needed it, that the opportunities that end up defining a career rarely look like it at the time. What emerged from the three pathways was that skills and judgment carry across roles, and none of the three had stayed anchored to just one.
The day closed with a networking brunch, giving alumni the chance to reconnect, catch up on where the past decade has taken everyone, and carry on a number of the day’s discussions informally over coffee and croissants, arguably where a fair share of the real exchange happens at any homecoming.
This year’s Alumni Homecoming was co-chaired by Mônica Murayama and Nicolás Gálvez Solís, to whom, together with Kyle Schneider, the TADS alumni community owes thanks for creating the space and the occasion for this gathering to happen, and for keeping a ten-year-old programme’s community as connected as it evidently still is.
