Third Annual Symposium on Pop Culture and International Law: Game of Thrones and Hjalmar Schacht

[Aysenur Zeynep Ozmen is a PhD student and teaching assistant at the University of Aberdeen School of Law. Her research interests are aviation and space law, autonomous vehicles and the legal aspects of artificial intelligence - all the cool stuff of law.] “This is space. It does not cooperate.”Mark Watney, The Martian (2015) Introduction David Bowie's Space Oddity was released in 1969, coinciding...

[Eoin Jackson (LLM Harvard, LLB Trinity College Dublin)] All views are entirely the author's own and do not necessarily represent any organization that the author may be associated with. In recent years there has been increased recognition that the climate emergency will have a disproportionate impact on minorities. We have seen an acknowledgement that climate change will have a gendered impact, a focus on the...

The UN Team of Experts on the Rule of Law and Sexual Violence in Conflict is looking to hire four interns: In the context of an ongoing project, the UN Team of Experts is currently seeking assistance to prepare and publish seven research papers on international criminal law and sexual violence in conflict. The research topics include: Understanding CRSV casebuilding: examining prosecution...

Introduction Of all the questions I've been asked concerning the latest round of violence in the Israel/Palestine situation, the most common is whether Israel's actions in Gaza amount to the war crime of collective punishment. Because of my role as a Special Advisor to the ICC Prosecutor, it would be inappropriate for me to address that question; there is, of course,...

[Alonso Gurmendi is a Lecturer in International Relations at Kings College London’s Department of War Studies and a contributing editor at Opinio Juris. I wish to thank Dr. Helen M. Kinsella, Prof. Adil Haque, and Ms. Sarah Zarmsky for their comments on previous versions of this post] On October 7th, Hamas militants broke down the security fences around Gaza, took over...

[Dr Saeed Bagheri is Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in International Law at the University of Reading School of Law. He conducts research in the law on the use of force and international humanitarian law.] After three decades of being occupied by Armenia, the territories in and around Nagorno-Karabakh (NK), which make up more than 20 per cent of Azerbaijan’s territory were recaptured...

In a world where powerful states are becoming more brazen in their impunity, it is crucial to give voice to those who resist. Along with nearly 800 lawyers, scholars, and practitioners, representing a diverse range of perspectives from academia and practice, I have signed a statement warning of the possibility of genocide in Gaza, Palestine. This open letter underscores the...

[Dr Letizia Lo Giacco is Assistant Professor of Public International Law at the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies of Leiden University] The International Court of Justice (ICJ, ‘the Court’) has recently heard the preliminary objections in the case Allegations of Genocide under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Ukraine v Russian Federation: 32 States...

If you're not careful, [international lawyers] will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.Malcolm X The Power of Mythmaking  Origin stories are always more fiction than fact, more myth than reality. At times, origin stories serve to redeem a dubious past, while at others they enable us to justify an unwelcoming...