What about MIDS vs QMUL concerning Arbitration?

Does anyone have any opinion concerning which is the best choice for an LLM in Arbitrage? MIDS or Queen Mary?

<blockquote>Statements such as the Geneva Faculty of Law is "the best in the word" and Stockholm is "almost unknown" are a bit exaggerated in my opinion. This is far from the truth. Check out the universities ranking.

</blockquote>

I don´t think it is exaggerated at all and, as far as I know, there is no ranking for faculty. Feel free to make a comparison btw faculties in this board and you will see that what I said is absolutly true.

The ranking of a university not always reflects the importance of a program. Actually, and just to give you an example, the MIDS' faculty is not the University of Geneva's faculty. It has a special faculty of its own.

You also forgot that the MIDS is organized both by the University of Geneva and The Graduate Institute, which is one of the most, if not the most, recognized school for public international law. This are of law is something that you will never study, for example, at Stock...

I am trying to give an impartial opionion and I don't beleive your opinion is impartial. I am not part of any of those programs and I do beleive the MIDS is the best in the world.

Regarding money, what you said its false. You can`t attend Yale, for example, for the same money of the MIDS. In addition, Yale, for example, do not have a similar program.

The argument that the MIDS is a new program makes no sense. Since when the age of a program is an element to determine its quality? In order to give an impartal opinion you should start by determining what elements makes a program good. In my opinion, the faculty and the coursework are the most relevant. If you consider that, the MIDS is better than all the universities you mentioned on international dispute settlement. I challenge you again to make a comparison between faculties but it seems you don't want. In your opinion, what are the elements that make a program good?

Finally, SCC is very prestigious but it is not even close to Switzerland, both as a center of arbitration and as a host of pulbic international law dispute settlement institutions.

I compleatly agree with Lionel Hutz.

The comparison between Faculties has been already done in this website and the MIDS has proven to be much better, at least from that point of view, than any other LL.M. program. I do not think Stefandudas will ever accept the challange because, if he has been reading this website for a while, he must already know that it is true.

What about Queen Mary concerning Arbitration?

This is not serious at all...

<blockquote>Firstly, you should understand that it is not about any kind of "challenge" I personally have to accept. I see it as a debate that is aimed to show students that are reading this site the pros and cons of each LLM. The fact that you guys are trying to make it look as if the MIDS is the supreme LLM program while the one at SU is rubbish, is simply wrong.</blockquote>

I never said the SU is rubbish. The SU is good. I just said the MIDS is better.

You say you are debating but that is not true. I asked you to explain which is your criteria for determing that a program is good and you never explain it. How do you want to have a serious debate without explaining the basis of your opinions? I told you I base my opnion on the faculty and the program but you don't want to talk about that...

<blockquote>Secondly, the fact that I agree that MIDS is a great LLM stand proof of the fact that indeed I am impartial. I have never stated that SU's program is better than MIDS, I simply said that from my point of view they are similar and that the balance may be tipped in favor of SU simply because of the costs.</blockquote>

If the criteria for being impartial is to say something good about other programs, then we are all impartial because, as I said above, the SU is good.

Regarding costs, as I said before, you get what you pay... if you want the best faculty, you have to pay for it, if you want to travell to all the most important dispute settlement institutions and tak with judges, arbitrators, etc., you have to pay for it... If you prefer to stay for free in Stock. with a local faculty and without travelling an meeting that people, then its fine...

In addition, you said SU is free just europeans, but the world is much more than EU and, as someone said, the MIDS provides great financial aid...

<blockquote>Thirdly, the fact that MIDS is a new program indeed makes sense. It is common knowledge that programs that last in time are very good. That is why certain programs last, while other get canceled. That is why universities such as Oxford or Cambridge that have been found some hundred years ago are the most prestigious. Ergo, the age of the program is an element to give you an idea about the quality of a program.</blockquote>

You confuse "universities" with "programs". The age of a university might make sense (as you said, Oxford is Oxford... and if the age of the university is the criteria, then the University of Geneva is much older than SU) but the age of the progam makes no sense at all (e.g. if Oxford launches a new program, no one can reasonably say that that program is good or bad just because it is new).

<blockquote>What you are saying that "SCC is very prestigious but it is not even close to Switzerland" is simply wrong, and anybody who has actually done arbitration knows that. I have done arbitration under both Swiss and SCC rules and there is simply no grounds to make such a statement. Maybe you were trying to say that Swiss arbitration is the most expensive in terms of administrative costs and arbitrator's fees. With that I agree, but otherwise...</blockquote>

You contradict yourself all the time. You say I have no grounds to say that Switzerland is a better seat of arbitration, but you do exactly the same. You show now objective grounds for saying that SCC is better, you just base your opinion in your alleged "experience", which we don`t even know if its true.

Objective grounds for saying that Geneva is a better seat of arbitration than Stockholm can be:

1. Why you can find more and better arbitration law firms in Switzerland than in Sweden? Just because it is fun for law firms to be there or because the market there is more important? Law firms are not stupid.

2. Why Swiss case law and doctrine is more qrecognized than the one of Sweden?

3. Which country has more dispute settlement bodies, Switzerland or Sweden? Switzerland

<blockquote>And another thing, I don't remember the Geneve Univ. or anybody representing MIDS ever winning the Willem C. Vis moot competition. The other univ. that you say are below MIDS, did, such as KCL! Also SU has been a semi finalist in 2009-2010</blockquote>

This is very simple to explain and, once again, your argument makes no sense. The MIDS is a new program so it is logic if they don´t reach the finals because they have no experience in competitions. In addition, you only talk about commercial arbitration, but you don´t mention other competitions. The MIDS has done great and reached finals in other competitions, such as the ones on WTO.

It makes no sense to say that a program is good or bad depending on how they do in competitions. If that is the criteria, then the best dispute settlement programs of the world should be in Australia becasue they win most of the competitons, and that is simple not true. They win because they spend more than a yeat training for that... an LLM lasts less than a year...

<blockquote>Let's not continue this discussion because I am not trying to convince anybody to go to SU or someplace else, I was simply giving my personal opinion...</blockquote>

Exactly, you are not discusing or debating and you have no intention to do so because you don't answer our questions and you don't explain the basis of your opinions... you are just stating your personal opnion

For any of you guys out there that are interested in getting a comparison between the two programs check out previous discussions on this website

http://www.llm-guide.com/board/71877/1#post-71918

Best of luck to anybody wanting to pursue a career in arbitration.

Cheers

<blockquote>This discussion can continue endlessly but it is pointless because you are exaggerating every statement you make and anyone who has had anything to do with arbitration can see it from a mile. </blockquote>

More evidence that you don't want to have a serious dabate... while I gave you specific information, and asked you to do the same, you opt to state your personal opinion again and again without showing any kind of objetive information... I don't know why you are so afraid of explaining in which grounds you base your opinion, of comparing faculties, etc... you can continue stating your personal opinion as a child, buy that doesn't mean you are right

I'm tired of this topic. Lionel Hutz don't waste your time.

Nobody can seriously argue that the SU LLM is as good as the MIDS, unless you want to study only commercial arbitration. This people always do the same. They enter into this site, they say maravillious things about Stockholm LLM, but when they have to justify what they say, they dissapear. I'm sure they do so because they did the LLM there and they want to sell it, but they don't realize that that is the worst publicity the LLM can have.