To Boldly Imagine New Legal Worlds: Lessons from Star Trek

[Anny Matamoros Pineda is a Doctoral student in public international law at Lund University]

One of the central appeals of science fiction lies in its capacity to imagine worlds that move beyond present reality while still remaining consistent with the known laws of the universe. Within this genre, utopian visions serve a deeper function by questioning the inevitability of existing institutions. It is in this context that Star Trek and its idea of global unity through a political entity such as the United Earth offers a valuable lens through which to examine the challenge it poses for international law. Such reflections are especially relevant in the current crisis of international law, where the field often appears unable to respond effectively to contemporary challenges. I argue that the utopian future envisioned in Star Trek invites us to question the presumed inevitability of foundational concepts in international law, while revealing that even well-intentioned efforts to imagine alternative futures risk reproducing the problems of the past when they remain anchored in inherited ways of thinking.  

What Could Be, But is Not: Science Fiction through the Lens of Star Trek

Created by Gene Roddenberry in the 1960s, Star Trek began as a science fiction television series which was more than just starships, warp speed and alien costumes. It offered a vision of a post-scarcity world in which humanity had finally outgrown poverty, war, and inequality. By doing this, Star Trek exemplifies the unique strength of science fiction, capturing the idea of what “could be, but is not.” 

Addressing the question “Our Future? Star Trek or Not?”, Stephen Hawking suggested that the show’s appeal lies in its portrayal of a safe and reassuring vision of humanity’s future. What began as a television series has evolved into a vast cinematic and television franchise, becoming an important part of modern pop culture and an inspiration for scientific developments. Hawking described the society depicted in Star Trek as one that has reached a state of “near perfection,” having evolved far beyond our current scientific, technological, and political organization. Regarding the latter, beyond envisioning a future in which humanity has become a space travel civilization, one of the most remarkable aspects of the Star Trek universe, particularly relevant to the international legal sphere, is the existence of the United Federation of Planets, an interplanetary alliance founded on peaceful cooperation.

According to the Charter of the United Federation of Planets, prospective members must possess a unified planetary government capable of representing their populations as a whole. Within this framework, Earth holds membership under the political entity known as the United Earth. While the transcendence of national divisions in favour of global unity serves as a cornerstone of the series utopian framework, the path required to achieve such total integration invites a critical question: is Star Trek a genuine utopia or a subtler form of dystopia?

A Utopia or a Subtler Dystopia: The Challenges of Imagining Alternative Worlds in Star Trek

In the Star Trek universe, by the end of the 21st century, the outbreak of the Third World War led to profound devastation, which ultimately prompted humanity to unite in peace and establish a single Earth government. This newfound unity became the driving force behind humanity’s development as a space travel civilization. 

Yet, although Star Trek has often been presented as a utopian science fiction, it has come under renewed scrutiny, not as a rejection of its ideals, but as an effort to grasp both the aspirations and the structural limitations embedded in its vision of the future. While the United Earth and the United Federation of Planets embody the ideals of unity and cooperation, one may still ask whether Star Trek ultimately depicts not a utopia, but rather a subtler form of dystopia. The first reason for this concern lies in the very origins of its utopian order. The achievement of “near perfection” comes only after humanity endures devastation through authoritarianism, extreme wealth inequality and nuclear war. The second reason concerns the question of inclusion, whether it is truly possible to imagine a United Earth in which people from historically marginalized groups could live on equal terms within this political organization. After all, its predecessor, the European Hegemony, already reveals the Eurocentric foundations underlying this vision. And the third, the Federation itself, whether this interplanetary alliance truly embodies mutual respect and cooperation, or whether it reproduces, on a galactic scale, the same logics of expansion and control that characterized European colonialism in the 16th century.

It is in this tension that Star Trek engages with colonialism and imperialism in a deeply ambivalent manner. One of the clearest examples of this tension is the Prime Directive or Starfleet General Order 1, a principle often portrayed as explicitly non-imperial and postcolonial that embodies Star Trek’s aspiration to imagine a postcolonial ethic of encounter.  The Directive prohibits interference with cultures and civilizations deemed “less developed” than the Federation, expressing an apparent commitment to autonomy, non-intervention, and respect for cultural difference. 

Nevertheless, a closer examination reveals that Starfleet ultimately makes a unilateral determination of who is “developed” and who is not in each of these encounters, primarily on the basis of technological advancement, thereby retaining control over the classification of difference. This may reflect an enduring sense of the Federation self-ascribed civilizational authority that echoes the very hierarchies of exploration and domination the Prime Directive ostensibly seeks to overcome.

While Star Trek is well-intentioned in its effort to imagine a utopian future, it nonetheless anchors that vision in the aftermath of a devastating world war. At the same time, it unintentionally reproduces colonial and imperial dynamics through the very tools it seeks to use to confront them. In this sense, even when a genuinely different vision of what could be is imagined, as was arguably the case with Gene Roddenberry, it remains difficult to move beyond the deeply internalized assumptions that shape our thinking and the very frameworks they seek to transcend. This insight is crucial for addressing the current crisis in international law, particularly when it comes to confronting the colonial and imperial legacies that continue to shape the field.

International Law in Times of Crisis

International law is currently facing a period of crisis, sparking renewed debates on its decline, frequently articulated through questions of its “death,” calls for its “reconstruction,” and depictions of the present moment as a “time of monsters” and “dystopia.” This sense of crisis stems from the significant destabilization of the international legal order caused by geopolitical and military shifts, such as Russia’s invasion of and ongoing war against Ukraine, the war and genocide in Gaza, the armed conflict in Sudan, and the Israel and the U.S. against Iran. Added to this, within the same international landscape, the second Trump administration has marked a shift that has led to attacks on multilateralism, expansionist ambitions, and has also contributed to the emergence of new conflicts. 

This context of crisis shows the limitations of an identity of international law based on liberal political theory. As Martti Koskenniemi argues, from this perspective, legal rules are presented as neutral and uniformly applicable, giving international law a dual character that seeks to prevent legal scholarship from collapsing into either apologism for politics, where law merely reflects state behaviour, or utopianism, where it becomes detached from political reality. In this sense, liberal political theory assumes that legal standards arise from the legal subjects themselves, which are the states and that, once established, this order becomes binding upon them. Yet this assumption is problematic, as states largely control the ascertainment and application of the law and does not reflect the power asymmetries of the international sphere. 

This is evident in the current crisis, where arrest warrants against Russian President Vladimir Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, remain contingent on the political will of states for their enforcement, even leading to the imposition of sanctions on the ICC by the U.S. Additionally, the adoption of U.S. 2025 National Security Strategy, in which it explicitly asserts that it will enforce what it terms a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine, reveals the power asymmetries of the international sphere.

In this sense, the identity of international law, shaped by liberal political theory, incorporates its problems within itself while remaining unaware of its internal contradictions, as it is assumed to be objective. This reveals a broader problem: both international law and Star Trek, in attempting to present a post-colonial and anti-imperialist world, remain constrained by the very frameworks they seek to transcend, as even their most “neutral” forms of reasoning and, in the case of Star Trek, its vision of what “could be” remain embedded within them. Thus, Koskenniemi argues that, before any meaningful attempt at reform can be undertaken, the notion of legal objectivity, and with it the conventional distinction between law, politics, and morality (justice), must be critically rethought. 

This insight is crucial for understanding today’s international landscape, which can easily lead scholars either toward nihilism or toward defending the current system in an effort to preserve the illusion that it is capable of objectivity and of constraining political power. From a critical perspective, B.S. Chimni observes that, within the framework of Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL), and among the different ways in which scholars conceptualize crises in international law, an “originary crisis” can be identified, one rooted in the foundational conditions of modern international law and its inextricable relationship with imperialism and colonialism. From a TWAIL understanding, a crisis is rooted in deep history and deep structures which will be with us as long as imperialism is not addressed. 

It is precisely this understanding of crisis that helps explain why the current state of international law cannot be seen as merely episodic. Rather, it is anchored in fundamental concepts commonly taken as natural within the field, such as sovereignty, the nation-state, and positivism, which are deeply embedded in, and have contributed to reinforcing, the asymmetric dynamics of colonialism and imperialism. However, any attempt to transform them often appears to be perceived as a utopian illusion. 

The Aspirations of Transformation in International Law

The current crisis of international law, rooted in fundamental concepts that reveal its colonial and imperial legacies, should open space for alternative legalities and epistemologies. However, this poses a significant challenge for international scholars. This difficulty is reflected in the responses developed to address the “anxieties” generated by fragmentation, which focused on two major theoretical approaches: constitutionalist and pluralist approaches, both of which offer alternative ways of rethinking the field. 

Although neither of these theoretical frameworks was originally developed in a way that recognizes the colonial and imperial legacies embedded in international law, much less as a means of addressing them, they have nonetheless been presented as ways of transcending the nation-state and challenging the notion of sovereignty. In the case of pluralist approaches, they further question the positivist understanding of law as a unified, hierarchical, and coherent order.

However, both approaches are open to criticism. Constitutionalist approaches, in particular, appear not only to remain anchored in the nation-state but also to leave unchallenged the ambition of law as a unified and coherent order. Likewise, scholars advocating for this perspective have also recognized that there is a need to confront the colonial legacy and Eurocentrism embedded within this theory. Pluralist approaches, which have primarily been presented as a descriptive project, continues to lack appeal as a long-term vision of what the global order should look like. Moreover, forms of pluralism can also be found in colonial contexts and asymmetrical relations.

In conclusion, Star Trek reveals that even our most ambitious visions of the future remain shaped by historical frameworks we conceived as natural. Yet, the invitation to boldly imagine a better future remains open. The challenge for international scholars today is to confront these constraints by making visible the conflictual views embedded within them, and the enduring consequences of colonialism and imperialism that continue to structure the present.