Bruno Sousa Rodrigues defended his thesis

On 13 February 2023, Bruno Sousa Rodrigues successfully defended his PhD thesis "Giving Form to Chaos: How Transnational Codification Has Progressively Established Authority in International Arbitration", with praise from the jury ("avec félicitations du jury") and a recommendation for publication.

This thesis studies the process of transnational codification of international arbitration, devoting special attention to its significance over the authority of arbitral procedure in a transnational administration of justice. The author’s concern for codification, however, does not stem from an attempt to organize the sources of arbitration law nor from a desire to identify a hierarchy of primary and secondary norms structuring arbitral procedure. Rather, he explores professional and epistemic struggles underlying codification projects, which have channelled the development of international arbitration.

The thesis claims that an encoded form of transnational arbitral authority did not emerge in a vacuum, by accident or spontaneously. Instead, the codification of arbitral authority was an intentional and coordinated project emerging from an ambition to create a uniform normative regime to govern international arbitration. In particular, the thesis argues that the authority of international arbitration was very much dependent first on its ambition to govern war and peace, and at a later stage, on geopolitical factors pertaining to the organisation of the global economy.

The work was completed under the supervision of Diego P. Fernández Arroyo (Sciences Po Law School) and examined by a jury composed of Mariana França Gouveia (Universidade Nova de Lisboa), Makane Moïse Mbengue (Université de Génève and Sciences Po Law School), Hélène Ruiz-Fabri (Max Planck Institute Luxembourg/Paris 1), Carmen Tiburcio (Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro), and Yas Banifatemi (GBS Disputes).