General

[Laurence Atkin-Teillet is a lecturer in international criminal and humanitarian law at Nottingham Law School] There are no innocent onlookers in this struggle. Just the guilty, and the dead.Braig in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim The Elder Scrolls is a long-standing gaming franchise published by Bethesda Softworks, with its first instalment released in 1994. Set in a richly imagined fictional universe, the...

[Dr Sergey Sayapin is Professor of law at KIMEP University (Almaty, Kazakhstan)] Musicals are not judgments, of course – yet the best of them do plead their case in song. Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s classic rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar presents a performative trial set in an occupied province, governed by an official who, under pressure from local elites,...

[Erick Guapizaca Jiménez is an S.J.D. candidate at the University of Michigan Law School, a lecturer at the Universidad Internacional del Ecuador, and an Assistant Editor with Opinio Juris]  Jorge Icaza, a twentieth-century Ecuadorian author, shocks readers with his raw novel Huasipungo. In this Indigenist work, he portrays the daily life of Indigenous individuals trapped in a system of a form of...

[Eirini Fasia is a lecturer at the Law Group of Wageningen University in the Netherlands and holds a DPhil from the University of Oxford specializing in public international law, environmental law, and the law of the sea] ‘This is hell. What are the rules in hell?’ Jang Deok-su, Season One Netflix’s Squid Game (2021-2025) offers more than a dystopian spectacle. It dramatizes economic...

[Jyotsna Manohar is an international trade lawyer who holds an LLM in transnational law from King’s College London] Welcome to the Cafeteria of Global Trade Sometimes the most striking political commentaries come not from political thrillers or dystopian dramas but from a 97-minute comedy targeted towards a teenage audience. This is certainly the case with 2004’s Mean Girls, a movie in which...

[Professor Luke Moffett is chair of human rights and international humanitarian law at Queen’s University Belfast and a lone wanderer through Fallout 3, New Vegas, 4 and 76] “War. War never changes. The Romans waged war to gather slaves and wealth. Spain built an empire from its lust for gold and territory. Hitler shaped a battered Germany into an economic superpower. But war never changes.”Ron...

[Tamara Grigoras is a PhD candidate in public international law at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) and a research fellow at the Waseda Graduate School of Law (Japan)] Not all creatures are equal. Or so do human animals tend to think. This belief, in turn, underpins and informs most human-made norms and institutions. As normative systems, both the Pokémon gaming universe...

[Dr Sarah Zarmsky is a Lecturer at Queen’s University Belfast School of Law and Deputy Managing Editor of Opinio Juris Dr Alonso Gurmendi is a Fellow in Human Rights and Politics at the London School of Economics & Political Science and a contributing editor at Opinio Juris] It’s that time of year again–we are pleased to introduce the fifth annual symposium on...

[Anna Kiefer is Advocacy and Litigation Officer at Sherpa. Cannelle Lavite is Co-Director, Business and Human Rights at ECCHR. Claire Tixeire is Co-Director, Institute for Legal Intervention at ECCHR.] Starting 4 November 2025, and continuing for six weeks, a criminal court in Paris will examine whether the multinational company Lafarge and several of its former top executives should be found guilty of financing...

[Emilia Klebanowski is a PhD candidate in international human rights law at Radboud University. Her research explores reparations for gross human rights violations.] On 22 October 2025, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued its advisory opinion on the Obligations of Israel in relation to the Presence and Activities of the United Nations, Other International Organizations and Third States in and...

[Meng Wang is a PhD Candidate in the International Law Department at Maastricht University, researching the protection of water in armed conflict across different branches of Public International Law. Andrés Cáceres Solari is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Department of International Law, Faculty of Law of Maastricht University, researching the compatibility of international humanitarian law with modern warfare] On 6 June...