In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Themes

30 Oct

[Davit Khachatryan is an international law expert and reader] “They talk to us of the rules of war, of chivalry, of flags of truce, of mercy to the unfortunate and so on. It’s all rubbish! … War is not courtesy but the most horrible thing in life; and we ought to understand that and not play at war.” Prince Andrei’s blunt rejection...

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29 Oct

[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...

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29 Oct

[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,...

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28 Oct

[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...

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28 Oct

[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...

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28 Oct

[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...

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27 Oct

[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...

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27 Oct

[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...

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27 Oct

[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...

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03 Oct

[Milagros Mutsios Ramsay is a J.S.D. Candidate at Yale Law School. She currently serves as the Legal Advisor to the Presidency of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights] The Inter-American Court of Human Rights’ Advisory Opinion OC-32/25 on Climate Emergency and Human Rights constitutes one of the most ambitious legal articulations of State’s obligations in the era of climate crisis. This...

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03 Oct

[Mariana Cruz Astudillo holds a law degree from the University of Chile, belongs to the Colla First Nation, and is a research associate at the Centre of Law and Climate Change Studies at the University of Valparaíso (CEDYCC)] Introduction On July 3, 2025, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (hereinafter the Court) issued Advisory Opinion OC-32/25 (hereinafter OC-32/25) in response to a...

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02 Oct

[Ignacio Vásquez Torreblanca is the Executive Director of the Centre for Law and Climate Change Studies at the University of Valparaíso, Chile, a Research Assistant at the Max Planck Institute, Germany and a Research Fellow at the University of Manchester, UK] Latin America is one of the regions most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, but it is also a...

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