In December 1795, William Pitt’s government introduced the Treasonable Practices Bill and the Seditious Meetings Bill—the “Gagging Acts” as their opponents called them. They were designed to suppress the radical democratic societies that had flourished in the wake of…

1. After the genocide in Gaza, we did not expect 2026 to be a year of peace. The biggest desire of Trump, "the great peacemaker," was to win the Nobel Peace Prize. But his first statements after the attack on Venezuela and Maduro's abduction show that the peacemaker…

In a recent piece published at Opinio Juris, Nikolas M. Rajkovic calls on international lawyers to recalibrate their “ways of seeing” to account for the multi-scalar, relational, and interconnected nature of contemporary authority and power. His article invites a…

Following a tumultuous start to her role as first lady of the United States of America, wherein she was accused of destroying ‘family values’ and promoting ‘militant feminism’, Hillary Clinton delivered a much-lauded speech condemning Chinese abuses of human rights…

We know the genocide in Gaza is a collective work, a sort of F35 genocide whose parts come from an imperial collective, a collective of old colonial states now led by the USA. So the denial of genocide, at least of its naming, is also shared by these states across…

The international policies of the second Trump administration have caused quite an upheaval. From raising trading tariffs to (supposedly) ending wars efforts – while at the same time bombing small boast and sanctioning judges, it has not been easy to understand it.…

The contemporary discourse on genocide is dominated by international criminal law, designed to punish individuals after the fact. Yet the framework derived from Public International Law and the Genocide Convention’s founding purpose was not punishment but prevention.…

In her review of Aesthetics and Counter-Aesthetics of International Justice, Isobel Roele mentions the use of ‘reverse-engineering’ as a method of counter-aesthetics. Sofia Stolk’s contribution to Aesthetics and Counter-Aesthetics of International Justice, the first…

The sound of the spoken word rising, pausing, the rhythms of the lines, of the stanzas, of the silences, the poem verbalised. The images etched on the walls in black and white, comics, graphic novels, stretching across wall after wall, winding around the room. The…

Narratives of international criminal justice often depart from the horrors of World War II and the legal process of the Nuremberg Trials to set the scene for how the International Criminal Court addresses contemporary violence. These narratives can be found in…

The politics of aesthetics are at the heart of Rob Knox and Christine Schwöbel-Patel’s energetic edited collection Aesthetics and Counter-Aesthetics of International Justice brings together a diverse group of scholars, practitioners, and artists. The editors approach…

I have returned to the classroom. After years inside bureaucracy – the slow gravity of minutes, clearances, and protocols – I am again among students, texts, and the low hum of ideas. The air is lighter; my wings that carry my creativity remember their work. It has…

Israel has boarded the Global Sumud flotilla, representing a further escalation of their response to flotillas seeking to deliver aid to Gaza. The boarding of the flotillas in international waters and the taking of people by force into Israeli territory violates…

**We are delighted to say that this post has been translated into Japanese by Yota Negishi, available here** It is the early hours of the morning on the 8th September 2025 and I am in Tunis at Sidi Bou Said Port listening to the sounds of stress, solidarity, and the…

With greatness sadness we heard of the untimely and sudden death of Conor Gearty at the age of 67. Conor was the professor of human rights law at the LSE. He was born in Ireland and this led to his lifelong interest in terrorism, state crimes, violations of human…

My philosophical project of radical democracy stands on two foundational intertwined discoveries that offer a firm ontological grounding of power. 1. The world is radically contingent but is simulated by a world that presents itself as necessary through potestas…

Oppression does not arrive wearing a hood; it arrives stamped, filed, and countersigned. What looks like order—forms, doctrines, jurisdiction—can be a choreography of domination. Fanon taught that colonial violence is not only the blow of the baton but the quiet…

International law is frequently represented as universal, neutral, and inclusive; however, from its inception, it has been influenced by, and primarily serves, a limited group of states historically categorised as "civilised.” This hierarchy is subtly embedded in…

Colonialism rarely dies; it mutates. Its uniforms change—from khaki to suits, from passbooks to policy papers—but the arrangement it protects remains the same: some live on the land, others live off it. Post-apartheid South Africa knows this intimately. Political…

Elena Esposito argues that artificial intelligence is misnamed and that a more accurate descriptor would be ‘artificial communication’. Here, communication is closely connected to the idea of being informed: a communication is pertinent to the extent that it informs…