Public International Law

[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...

Israel’s illegal blockade of Gaza turns twenty next year. In the context of state-to-state violence and of an anti-colonial struggle for self-determination, the Israeli action is unique, subverting so many authorities at once: the ICJ, the ICC, the UNGA, and countless international and regional civil society organisations. Since the blockade began, Israel has inflicted catastrophic levels of suffering to impose...

[R. Scott Adams is a PhD candidate at Adelaide University.] Jus contra bellum is the raison d’être of modern international law. When that regulation becomes impotent, prescriptions of conduct within war, jus in bello, emerge to meet the purpose of the law. Jus ad bellum and jus in bello seek two complementary goals: First to prevent war; second to reduce suffering...

[Ashley S. Kinseth is an international human rights lawyer working on atrocity crimes and statelessness and a member of the Genocide Experts Working Group convened by Genocide Watch. She has conducted field research in Myanmar's Rakhine State and in Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh and India.]  In Part I, I described the elaborate system of permits, arbitrary taxes, village labor quotas, and...

[Ashley S. Kinseth is an international human rights lawyer working on atrocity crimes and statelessness and a member of the Genocide Experts Working Group convened by Genocide Watch. She has conducted field research in Myanmar's Rakhine State and in Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh and India.]  Rohingya fleeing Myanmar’s northern Rakhine State pay $300 to $500 for documents to get past Arakan...