[Lt Col R. Scott Adams is a Judge Advocate for the United States Air Force. He was previously assigned to the Operations and International Law Directorate for US Air Force Headquarters, and as an Exchange Officer with the Australian Defence Force in Canberra. He was chief legal counsel for Task Force Liberty, as part of Operation Allies Welcome, the US...
[Mr Mark Douglas is a Maritime Domain Analyst at Starboard Maritime Intelligence. He qualified as a Marine Engineer Officer while in the Royal New Zealand Navy. He later concurrently served as New Zealand Assistant Defence Advisor to Singapore and the New Zealand International Liaison Officer to the Singapore Information Fusion Centre. Dr Trung Nguyen is a Research Fellow at the Centre...
[Jens Iverson is an assistant professor of international law at Leiden University] The war in Ukraine was always about Russian aggression and the collective response to that illegal, ongoing crime. A just and sustainable peace needs to focus on reducing the risk of Russian aggression in the future. Unfortunately, the “peace plan” proposed by the US to Ukraine does not do enough...
[Jessica Dorsey is an Assistant Professor of International Law at Utrecht University School of Law, an Executive Board Member of Airwars, and the Managing Editor of Opinio Juris.] In a New York Times essay published last week, Jeh Johnson, General Counsel of the Department of Defense in President Barack Obama’s first term and Director of Homeland Security in his second, seeks...
[Antonia Mulvey is a British lawyer, and the founder and executive director of Legal Action Worldwide. She has also served as a UN investigator on the Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar and advised UN agencies and governments on sexual and gender-based violence and access to justice. Terry Flyte is an international lawyer and programme lead at Legal Action Worldwide. He works at...
[Alice Autin is international justice researcher at Human Rights Watch. Jörn Oliver Eiermann served as senior international justice counsel at Human Rights Watch from September to November 2025.] The December 2024 fall of the Bashar al-Assad government marks a historic turning point for Syria, and after decades of atrocities, potentially for justice. Despite extensive information and evidence of serious crimes, the Assad...
[Merna Aboul-Ezz is a scholar of international law and human rights. She has worked with victims and survivors of human rights violations, advocating for their meaningful participation in transitional justice and accountability mechanisms.] On 17 October 2025, the Portuguese parliament approved a bill proposed by the far-right Chega party banning face coverings worn for “gender or religious motives” in most public...
[Bernadette Lumbela is a Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg] The Trump administration’s shifts in U.S. foreign economic policy have had far-reaching global effects. While many countries have felt the impact of tariffs, two measures are particularly concerning for countries with lower income: cuts to USAID (United States Agency for International...
[Sude Kınık is a legal trainee at Kabine Law Office in Istanbul, Turkey] The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) delivered its latest climate change judgment, Greenpeace Nordic and Others v. Norway on October 28th, following closely in the footsteps of its decision in Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz and Others v. Switzerland. In this new case, the Court reaffirmed and applied the...
[Dr Atul Alexander is an Assistant Professor at the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences. Vadita Agarwal is a final year law student at the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences.] Trump’s second term has witnessed unending executive orders, official statements, and social media pronouncements. Some of these actions can be classified according to Markus Gehring and Tejas Rao as first,...
[Dr Mando Rachovitsa is an Associate Professor in human rights law at the School of Law, University of Nottingham and the Deputy Director of the Human Rights Law Centre] Although the UK’s ambivalence on adopting a national regulatory framework for AI has received considerable discussion, the UK’s policy and role in advancing the international governance of AI safety remains to be...
[Alessandra Spadaro works as Assistant Professor in public international law at Utrecht University. She is conducting a three-year project on “Business in and for war: the role and limits of international humanitarian law”, funded by the Dutch Research Council.] On 6 November 2025, The Hague Court of Appeal handed down its judgment in a case brought by a coalition of Palestinian...