EJIL: The Podcast!

One feature of the turn to history in international law has been the adoption of ‘national’ traditions (here using ‘national’ very loosely) as a lens through which to explore a broader picture. This focus on national traditions has converged with rich work styled as comparative international law, exploring how international law operates as a fragile common language even as governments deploy its grammar and vocabulary in quite different ways. In this episode we take up the question of whether there is a distinctive Russian approach to or use of international law. This takes us to reflections on the terrain from which we judge this, particularly today. What are the comparators and from which perspective are we taking a view? It also takes us to the stakes of thinking in terms of these long-range continuities in national legal styles in the first place. How does that shape our perspective on the broader system and how it might develop in future? Megan Donaldson is joined by Lauri Mälksoo (University of Tartu), Erika de Wet (University of Graz) and the political scientist Gulnaz Sharafutdinova (Director of the Russia Institute, King’s College London).Scholarship discussed in the episode includes Lauri Mälksoo’s recent book, Russia, the Soviet Union, and Imperial Continuity in International Law (2025); and Gulnaz Sharafutdinova’s The Red Mirror: Putin's Leadership and Russia's Insecure Identity (2020) and The Afterlife of the ‘Soviet Man’: Rethinking Homo Sovieticus (2023). Erika de Wet expands on themes in ‘Is the future for collective security regional? Assessing current challenges to regional and sub-regional security frameworks in Africa’, forthcoming Japanese Yearbook of International Law (2026).

Nicolás M. Perrone, scholar of international relations focused on trade and Global South perspectives, recommends readings on WTO narratives and Global South trade reforms. Michelle Ratton Sanchez, Brazilian international law expert on Latin American foreign policy, suggests works on Brazil’s policy shifts and the documentary Fading Sky. They highlight books and films that trace political, economic and ecological transformations.

In January 2026, the Prime Minister of Canada Mark Carney gave a widely noted speech at the World Economic Forum, in which he described the current period we're living through as a rupture in the world order. How should we be thinking about rupture – and continuity – in relation to the contemporary international economic order? What is happening to international law, the purposes to which it is being put, its centrality as a technology of governing over distance, its status as a carrier for aspirations to multilateralism and universalism? Are we in fact living through a period of rupture or merely the loss of faith of a hegemon in its own international legal tools? This episode tackles these questions, and more, focussing particularly on how Latin America is experiencing and reacting to this moment of crisis – or, perhaps, of opportunity. Andrew Lang (University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom) is joined by Michelle Ratton Sanchez Badin (FGV Sao Paulo School of Law, Brazil) and Nicolás M. Perrone (Universidad de Valparaiso, Chile). For more on the scholarship and reading recommendations of panelists, see accompanying post on EJIL:Talk!.

Palestine and the Palestinians are often the subjects of conversations in the news, on blogs and in judicial opinions, but not present in conversations themselves. The issues are treated episodically in connection with dramatic events or judicial processes or UN resolutions, and these can entrench an atomization of attention into the atrocities committed in the Israeli-occupied territories of East Jerusalem, Gaza and the West Bank, restrict visibility of historical continuities and miss more gradual and pervasive developments. One difficulty with international courts, which have been particularly prominent recently, is that the proceedings are long and often so far removed from the people they affect that they can miss complex human dimensions. Discussions about sovereignty, statehood, security, borders, violations of conventions and the interpretation of UN resolutions might not capture what is happening on the ground. Each of these areas could fill a podcast in its own right, but this episode tries to bring out a sense of the range of legal questions concerning the past, present and future of Palestine. Victor Kattan (Nottingham; also adviser to Britain Owes Palestine campaign) is joined by Mona Rishmawi (inter alia, visiting professor at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights) and Sonia Boulos (Antonio de Nebrija University, Spain). For materials referred to, see EJIL:Talk!

Nicolas Angelet, a Professor at the University of Ghent and expert in international law, joins Oona Hathaway, a Yale Law professor and director at the Center for Global Legal Challenges. They dive into the legality of recent U.S. military strikes against suspected drug boats, critiquing the justifications of self-defense and the implications for extraterritorial human rights. The discussion also explores the ICJ’s advisory opinion on UN privileges during conflicts, stressing the erosion of international legal norms amidst rising tensions, particularly concerning Venezuela.

Nehal Bhuta & Megan DonaldsonWe see today flagrant breaches of the prohibitions on the threat or use of force, but also renewed pressure and scrutiny on a related but broader prohibition, the prohibition of intervention, forcible or otherwise. In some ways, it is this broader norm of non-intervention which presents the most deep-seated puzzles in international law and international politics. In a world of profound interdependence, when should states butt out of other states' business? Nehal Bhuta (Edinburgh) and Megan Donaldson (UCL) are joined by Marco Roscini (University of Westminster) and Frédéric Mégret (McGill University) to explore the past, present and future of this norm.Scholarship referred to in the episode includes Marco Roscini, International Law and the Principle of Non-Intervention (2024); and Frédéric Mégret, Interference in Sovereign Affairs and the Discursive Economy of International Law (2025).

There were gasps in the courtroom when the ICJ delivered its advisory opinion on the obligations of States in respect of climate change on 23 July 2025. In this episode, Margaret Young (Melbourne Law School), Phoebe Okowa (Queen Mary University of London, member of the International Law Commission) and Lavanya Rajamani (Oxford) explore how, with its robust and at times radical reasoning, the Court has delivered a truly significant moment for international law.Scholarship referred to in the episode includes Phoebe N. Okowa, State Responsibility for Transboundary Air Pollution in International Law (2000); Lavanya Rajamani, ‘Interpreting the Paris Agreement in its Normative Environment’ (2024) 77 Current Legal Problems 167; Margaret A. Young, ‘Climate Change and Law: A Global Challenge for Legal Education’ (2021) 40 University of Queensland Law Journal 351; and Margaret A. Young, ‘Fragmentation’ in Lavanya Rajamani and Jacqueline Peel (eds), Oxford Handbook of International Environmental Law (2021) 85.

Tom Dannenbaum, a Professor of International Law at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, delves into the legality of military action by Israel and the US against Iran. He discusses the complexities of justifying self-defense in international law, particularly regarding imminent threats. The conversation also covers recent ECHR rulings related to Ukraine, focusing on human rights violations and extraterritorial jurisdiction. Dannenbaum emphasizes the need for accountability in conflicts and explores legal remedies for Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression.

Migration has become a defining issue of our time, visibly shaping political discourse, legal systems, and public imaginaries. Yet for all its salience, international law’s capacity to respond to the complexities of human mobility remains fractured, fragile, and often inadequate. In this episode, we take a hard look at the international legal architecture surrounding migration: where it comes from, where it fails, and what alternative frameworks might exist beyond the dominant focus on non-refoulement and transnational criminal law. We begin with a frank assessment: despite landmark treaties like the 1951 Refugee Convention, international law provides no comprehensive regime for facilitating – much less fostering – human mobility. Instead, migrants are increasingly subject to carceral and criminalizing legal responses, while international legal regimes defer to the sovereignty and discretion of receiving states.Joining us for this episode are three experts in global migration law and governance: Jaya Ramji Nogales (Temple Law School in Philadelphia), Noora Lori (Boston University), and Amanda Bisong (European Center for Development Policy Management). Together, they offer critical insights on how legal scholars and practitioners might better understand, challenge, and reimagine the role of international law in regulating – and enabling – mobility across borders.Scholarship mentioned includes Bina Fernandez’s ‘Traffickers, Brokers, Employment Agents, and Social Networks: The Regulation of Intermediaries in the Migration of Ethiopian Domestic Workers to the Middle East’ (2013) 47 International Migration Review 814–43 and Petra Molnar’s The Walls Have Eyes: Surviving Migration in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (2024).

Susan Marks’ EJIL 36(1) Foreword asks ‘If the World is a Family, What Kind of Family Is It?’. It’s a provocative question for international lawyers, as the trope of the family runs through the discipline in all kinds of complex, even contradictory, ways. In this episode, Janne Nijman (Graduate Institute & University of Amsterdam) interviews Susan Marks (LSE) about her Foreword and the larger project it inaugurates. Their conversation ranges across the three ‘cases’ featured in the Foreword—the human family in human rights law, the ‘family of nations’, and the child as future in climate change debates—and beyond. What are the stakes of employing these familial tropes? What do they offer and what might they mask? What alternative discourses or imaginaries might be available?The exchange moves through visual as well as textual languages of family, in the form of photography exhibitions (for a glimpse: New York Museum of Modern Art’s ‘The Family of Man’ (1955); the deliberate counterpoint and tribute, Fenix’s ‘The Family of Migrants’ (2025); as well as World Press Photo’s ‘Ties that Bind: Photography and Family’ (2025)). Other scholarship mentioned includes Ariella Azoulay’s analysis of the Family of Man exhibition as ‘A Visual Universal Declaration of Human Rights’; Stephen Humphreys’ ‘Against Future Generations’ (from EJIL 33(4), Nov 2022); Lee Edelman’s No Future (2004); Jodi Dean’s Comrade: An Essay on Political Belonging (2019); and Janne Nijman’s ‘Grotius’ Imago Dei Anthropology: Grounding Ius Naturae et Gentium’ in Koskenniemi et al (eds), International Law and Religion: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (2017).