[Róisín Pillay is a supervisor and Ayşe Bingöl Demir is the director of the Turkey Human Rights Litigation Support Project, a Middlesex University School of Law–based initiative focused on strategic litigation, research, and advocacy] In a courtroom in Istanbul on 9 September, a trial will take place that may be all too emblematic of our times. Leaders of the Istanbul Bar...
[Christine Evans is an Adjunct Senior Lecturer at the law faculty of Lund University and a human rights practitioner/investigator who has worked for the UN. Nieves Molina is an international lawyer and former senior UN officer. She is writing in her own capacity.] This post argues that the current political situation requires urgent and critical reconsideration of the role that sanctions can...
[Kate McInnes is a Vancouver-based criminal defence lawyer and the Principal at Arendt Chambers, Canada's first and only law firm practicing exclusively in international human rights law and international justice] The creation of the Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine (STCAU), a court embedded within the Council for Europe framework, marks a historic effort in securing accountability for...
[Theodore Hanna is an LL.M. candidate in International and European Law at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens] Introduction On 18 July 2025, the European Union adopted its eighteenth package of sanctions against Russia, one of its most robust to date, tightening measures on Russia’s energy, banking, and defense sectors. Uniquely, this package targets investor–State dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanisms, a system that...
[Saparya Sood is a doctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods (Bonn, Germany). She is a lawyer qualified in India and received her postgraduate degree in law and economics as a recipient of an Erasmus Mundus scholarship. Views expressed are personal.] The European Commission recently introduced the Omnibus Package on 26 February 2025. While presented as...
[Dr Sally Longworth is a researcher and Julia Dalman is an analyst at the Swedish Defence Research Agency] On 2 May 2025, a Ukrainian unmanned surface vehicle (USV) successfully engaged a Russian fighter jet close to a Russian naval base in the eastern Black Sea. The attack was likely carried out by a Magura-V7. The two-person crew of the fighter jet...
[Izza Drury is a Legal Fellow on the Border Justice Team at the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights. She holds a JD from Harvard Law School and completed a post-graduate fellowship at the European Court of Human Rights.] On 1 July 2025 Dr. Marialena Tsirli, Registrar of the European Court of Human Rights, published a keynote speech titled “Developing...
[Andrii Nekoliak is a re:constitution Fellow 2025/2026. He was previously a MEMOCRACY postdoctoral researcher at the T.M.C. Asser Institute and Konrad Adenauer Junior Fellow at the University of Cologne. He holds a PhD in Political Science from University of Tartu. Roman Nekoliak is a senior international relations officer at the Center for Civil Liberties (Kyiv, Ukraine). He holds a Ph.D. in...
[Vikrant Sharma works with the defence team of Mr. Kadri Veseli at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague. He graduated cum laude from the advanced LL.M. in public international law, specialising in international criminal law, from Leiden University.] The Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (‘the Court’ or ‘ICC’), Karim Khan, confirmed on 30 September 2024 that Lithuania had referred to...
[Professor Jennifer Trahan is director of the Concentration in International Law & Human Rights at the NYU Center for Global Affairs and convenor of The Global Institute for the Prevention of Aggression] A Special Session of the Assembly of States Parties to the International Criminal Court (ICC) took place at the United Nations from July 7-9, 2025. At issue was whether...
[Benoit Meystre is a Swiss lawyer and legal advisor at the International Investigations and Litigation Program of TRIAL International.] TRIAL International filed a criminal complaint against Ousman Sonko in 2017. The organisation supported nine plaintiffs who traveled to Switzerland in January 2024 to be heard by the court. It also ensured the regular publication of summaries of the hearings throughout the trial and advocated for the proceedings to...
[Theodore Hanna is an LL.M. candidate in International and European Law at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens] In The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoyevsky cautions that, “[t]he man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him.” This warning resonates powerfully in the context of contemporary...