22 December 2025
Amal Clooney (née Alamuddin)
Amal Clooney is an international human rights lawyer known for representing victims of mass atrocities, journalists prosecuted for their reporting, survivors of genocide and sexual violence, political prisoners, and marginalised communities. Through strategic litigation before international, national, and regional courts, as well as through the Clooney Foundation for Justice and the Oxford Institute of Technology and Justice, her work is dedicated to expanding access to justice. Continue reading >>
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22 December 2025
When Universities Govern
When UN Special Rapporteurs send an allegation letter to a university, international law is doing something unusual. On 14 October 2025, five mandate-holders addressed such a letter to Columbia University, raising concerns about protest policing, disciplinary sanctions, surveillance, and the treatment of non-citizen students and scholars in connection with Gaza-related expression and assembly. The letter does not resolve disputed facts. Its importance lies elsewhere: it reflects a shift in how international human rights law responds to the privatisation of coercive governance. Continue reading >>
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17 October 2025
Pick and Choose at the ICJ
The International Court of Justice has recently begun to deviate from its own standards. Three cases illustrate the emergence of a new approach to assessing “circumstances” required for the indication of provisional measures under Article 41 of the ICJ Statute. Traditionally, the Court has applied a structured five-prong chronological test, established in Belgium v. Senegal. In contrast, it now seems to adopt a more selective, “pick-and-choose” approach to that test. While giving the Court a certain degree of flexibility in assessing the circumstances, this approach creates risks of arbitrariness and unpredictability. Continue reading >>
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09 October 2025
The Shape of Things to Come
While global meat governance currently faces significant political obstacles to transformative change, early signs point toward a shift toward a more sustainable and responsible global food system. The extension of legal principles such as the no-harm rule to climate change, the emergence of a global governance complex, normative frameworks like One Health, and the recent proliferation of policy initiatives may even signal the early formation of a new global food system architecture. Driven by bottom-up forces, these developments have the potential to reshape current practices and advance sustainable meat governance. Continue reading >>
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08 October 2025
The International Law of Meat Trade
The legal barriers erected by international trade law tend to stymie animal welfare policies. States might, in good faith, fear to violate international trade law. They also use the international trade regimes as a scapegoat for not promoting animal welfare domestically. This happened in Switzerland with foie gras, a cruelty meat product which, after discussion in Parliament, has not been prohibited. The argument was that a market ban might violate WTO law. Continue reading >>
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01 October 2025
Defund Meat: A Call for Transformative Meat Governance
“Defund Meat” may be an unusual and perhaps provocative title for a critical interdisciplinary discussion around meat in the Anthropocene. At first blush, it may sound like a crude activist slogan, or a hopelessly idealistic call for abolishing the meat system. Upon closer examination, however, it turns out to be a sheep in wolf’s clothing. As I shall argue, defunding meat is a much more commonsensical, pragmatic, and mainstream(able) proposition than its radical overtone might initially suggest. Continue reading >>20 September 2025
Neither Reform nor Reconstruction
Contemporary international law is in crisis, but not yet in a systemic crisis. Based on historical experience, therefore, a reconstruction of international law is not to be expected for the time being. In the foreseeable future, the existing system will continue to exist, but in the absence of meaningful reform it will also be further weakened. We must prepare ourselves for a prolonged period of stagnation and even atrophy, a progressive wasting away and marginalisation of norms and institutions built in the past. Continue reading >>
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16 September 2025
Killing For Show
On September 2 and 15, President Trump ordered the United States Navy to destroy small speed boats in the Caribbean. In both cases, all on board died. International lawyers have uniformly criticized the killings as unlawful. The President and his closest advisers have repeated that they simply do not care whether the killings violated the law. This may well be President Trump's most dangerous assault on the rule of law to date. And, yet, government officials in states long committed to the rule of law at home and abroad have remained largely silent. Continue reading >>
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12 September 2025
From Sidelines to Center Stage
The trilogy of climate advisory opinions from the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and the International Court of Justice marks a watershed moment not only for climate litigation but also for understanding the evolving role of Conferences of the Parties (COPs) in international law. This post analyses the courts' engagement with COPs and argues that it represents another step in clarifying their institutional role in global governance – one that elevates these treaty bodies from largely diplomatic forums to authoritative interpreters and potentially norm-creators within treaty regimes. Continue reading >>
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06 August 2025