[Alessia Corti holds an MSc in Human Rights from LSE and currently works in the NGO sector and as a research assistant at the University of Rome 'La Sapienza'.] Five days, nine posts and some sharks with a laser beam attached to their heads later, the 6th Annual Symposium on Pop Culture and International Law comes to an end. We opened the...
[Nivedita S is a Research Fellow with the Centre for International Law, National University of Singapore and an avid reader.] The political economy of resource extraction in international law typically focuses on tangible resources such as land, minerals, energy, and biological materials. The vocabulary that international law appears to have developed is a vocabulary of things. The likes of permanent sovereignty...
[Lu Yaoyao is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Law, The University of Hong Kong.] The 2026 Chinese film Once Upon a Time in the Middle East tells the story of an ordinary Chinese protagonist caught in a foreign conflict. Unlike earlier Chinese new mainstream films, the film approaches war through everyday experiences and personal encounters. These different cinematic perspectives...
[Estéfany Rocha Monteiro is a Brazilian lawyer and researcher. She studied at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights and has previously worked with the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the United Nations.] Since 1997, Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece has followed Monkey D. Luffy, a young pirate searching for the legendary treasure that gives the manga its...
[Lakshmidevi Somanath is Partner - Litigation & Strategy at Anand and Anand, India and a PhD Scholar at IIT Kharagpur. She formerly served in the Intellectual Property Appellate Board, Government of India as a Member Judge.] In March 2025, the launch of native image generation together with GPT-4o created an avalanche of family photos and movie posters recreated in the unique...
[Dr Laurence Atkin-Teillet is a Lecturer in International Criminal and Humanitarian Law at Nottingham Law School, Nottingham Trent University.] What makes a world real? Is it the material from which it is made, the person who created it, or the lives of those who inhabit it? And if a world contains beings who think, love, suffer, build communities and fear their...
[Shaoxuan Xu is a PhD student in international law at Fudan University Law School and holds an LLM from New York University School of Law.] When Ye Wenjie receives an extraterrestrial warning, she already has the means to answer. The warning tells her that replying will let the Trisolarans locate Earth and bring conquest, yet she responds. Later, Mike Evans finances...
[Mia Colliard is a Legal Researcher and LL.B. Candidate at the University of Fribourg, CH.] In Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997) we make the acquaintance of charmingly incompetent supervillain Dr. Evil. After emerging from a 30-year-long cryogenic sleep, Dr. Evil attempts to take over the world once more. Fortunately, plans do not go accordingly, and once he has captured...
[Himani Jha is currently working as a Research Associate specialising in Public International Law and International Criminal Law at National Law University Delhi, India. Dr. Garima Tiwari is an Associate Professor of Law and Director of the Public International Law Centre at National Law University Delhi, India.] "I'm the same as you." — Eren Yeager to Reiner Braun, Liberio At Fort Slava, a...
[Christine Bianco is a professor of Political Science and Legal Studies at St. John Fisher University.] Introduction Percy Weasley and former U.S. President Joe Biden are an odd pair to lump together, not least because only one is a real person. Yet, both have one important common characteristic: their faith in international law. In 2022, Biden asserted, “we emerged anew in the...
I am very proud that Opinio Juris has managed to host a yearly online symposium that connects international law with pop culture for six years in a row. Scholars from all over the world send us tens of articles every year, discussing the most incredible topics in the most creative ways. It has become a bit of a staple of...
[Bjørn Kunoy works at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs & Fisheries of the Faroe Islands and is an Adjunct Professor of International Law at the University of the Faroe Islands.] Consistent with Article 77(1) of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), States are vested with sovereign and exclusive rights to exploit and explore the mineral and...