In association with the International Commission of Jurists

North America

15 Oct

[Craig Martin is a Professor of Law and Co-Director of the International and Comparative Law Center at Washburn University School of Law in the United States. Professor Michael J. Kelly holds the Sen. Allen Sekt Endowed Chair in Law at Creighton University and co-chairs the American Bar Association’s Task Force on Internet Governance.] There has been considerable analysis of President Trump’s AI...

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07 Oct

[Moises A. Montiel Mogollon is a professor of international law at the Centro de Investigaciones Docentes y Económicas (CIDE)] As a result of the unilateral military buildup in the southern Caribbean by the United States with the alleged goal of combatting drug trafficking, the North-American nation has conducted a series of militarized operations resulting in the death of presumptively Venezuelan nationals...

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19 Sep

[Louisa Handel-Mazzetti is an Assistant Professor at the Royal Netherlands Defense Academy (NLDA) and a PhD Candidate at the Institute of Air and Space Law at Leiden University] In May 2025, President Trump unveiled the 175 billion dollar plan to build the Golden Dome missile shield, originally introduced in January 2025. Drawing inspiration from Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (‘Star Wars’) and...

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23 Jul

[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...

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05 Jun

[Dr Lena Riemer is an Assistant Professor of Law at Central European University working on migration related topics] In early 2025, hundreds of migrants from Iran, Afghanistan, Russia, and beyond found themselves confined in a hotel in Panama City. Desperate notes scrawled on scraps of paper and pressed against windows pleaded for help. These individuals had been removed from the United...

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23 May

[William Worster has taught public international law, the law of international organizations and international migration and refugee law at The Hague University of Applied Sciences for more than sixteen years] This post raises the possibility that the current and proposed deportations from the US might rise to the level of a crime against humanity as they unfold. Recent deportation actions by...

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02 May

[Dr Henrique Marcos is a lecturer at the Foundations of Law Department, Faculty of Law Maastricht University] This text is inspired by the discussions held at the event “Whatever Happened to TikTok” organised by the Law & Popular Culture Network at Maastricht University Faculty of Law in February 2025. In this post, I discuss the recent ban and subsequent unbanning of TikTok...

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09 Apr

As I write these lines, the United States is fighting for the very soul of its democracy. Under dispute is whether their government can forcibly transfer a lawful resident – in this case a Latino with a tattoo – to a forced labour camp in El Salvador without any due process. For now, the US Supreme Court’s answer seems to be “no”, provided the...

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19 Mar

[Javier Urizar is a Guatemalan human rights lawyer, currently working at the International Service for Human Rights (ISHR)] A Spanish version of this post has been published on Agenda Estado de Derecho here. National courts have always had an inseparable relationship with human rights. As the controlbody by excellence, they have been fundamental in limiting the acts of authority and sanctioning those...

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13 Mar

[Frédéric Mégret is the Hans & Tamar Oppenheimer Chair in Public International Law at the Faculty of Law, McGill University and the James S. Carpentier Visiting Professor at Columbia Law School] The question of how Mexico and Canada police their borders has emerged as a considerable symbolic stake in the current crisis with the US. The US President has made a number of...

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25 Feb

[Benjamin Thorne is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Criminal Law at the University of Reading] Almost 3 weeks into Donald Trump’s second term as US President and one could have been forgiven for becoming somewhat numb to the seemingly never ending conveyor belt of Executive Orders (EO) being announced. However, one particular EO jolted many from their numbness, not because it...

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