On Monday, November 2, 2026, from 9:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m., the Intesa Sanpaolo Center for Transnational Litigation, Arbitration, and Commercial Law and Sciences Po Law School will host a conference titled “The dangers of the ‘system of legal systems’ for practicing lawyers: Focus on Contract Law” in the Salle du Conseil, Floor Five, 13 rue de l’Université, Paris.
Comparative lawyers have long sorted the world’s legal orders into families, and that taxonomy has quietly migrated from the classroom into practice. Courts, arbitrators and counsel invoke it to predict outcomes and to fill gaps. But doing so may lead practitioners astray in exactly the cases where precision matters most. This half-day symposium brings together comparatists and uniform law specialists to test the taxonomy against both method and substance.
The first part, on methodology, interrogates the framework itself. Michele Graziadei of the University of Turin, Professor of Comparative Private Law, will question the system of legal systems and the perils of mistaking maps for territory. Kevin E. Davis, the Beller Family Professor of Business Law and Faculty Director of the Hauser Global Law School program, will address legal heterodoxy in the Global South and legal classification. Marco Torsello of the University of Verona, Full Professor of Comparative Private Law, founding partner of ARBLIT, will examine the impact of uniform law on the system of legal systems. Franco Ferrari, the Intesa Sanpaolo Center’s Director and Clarence D. Ashley Professor of Law, will then turn to the system of legal systems and the interpretation of uniform law instruments.
The second part moves from theory to the doctrines that decide real disputes. Giuditta Cordero-Moss of the University of Oslo, former President of the International Academy of Comparative Law, will speak on good faith. Francesca Ragno of the University of Bologna, Full Professor of International Law and Director of Studies for the Hague Academy’s 2028 Private International Law Summer Course, will take on the battle of forms. José Antonio Moreno Rodríguez of Altra Legal, member of the UNIDROIT Governing Council and of the Permanent Court of Arbitration, will address expectation damages. Alejandro M. Garro of Columbia Law School, who was a member of the working group that prepared the UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts, will discuss hardship.
Diego P. Fernández Arroyo of Sciences Po Law School, Director of its LLM in Transnational Arbitration & Dispute Settlement, former President of the Curatorium of The Hague Academy of International Law and President of the International Academy of Arbitration Law, will deliver the closing remarks.
For more information, please download the flyer.