EJIL: Talk!
- War, Neutrality and the UN Charter: State Practice in the Iran Conflict 27/03/2026Legal assessments of the ongoing Israel-US hostilities with Iran have thus far been largely characterized by a binary framework. Criticisms have focused on the manifest disregard for the UN Charter and the law governing self-defence. Supportive assessments have either contorted the Charter requirement of imminence beyond recognition—or simply looked past it to frameworks that espouse […]Himanil Raina
- The Court That Built the Advisory Opinion It Refused to Complete: OC-30/25 on Arms Trafficking, Corporate Immunity, and the Reach of Advisory Jurisdiction 26/03/2026Mexico’s effort to hold the gun industry to account has now encountered an institutional setback in San José. Its request for an advisory opinion raised six questions before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR). This post examines, against a more expansive account of OC-30/25 offered here, whether laws granting public or private arms-industry companies […]Thairi Nazareth Moya Sánchez
- Neutrality at Sea in Practice: Rescue, Internment, and Warship Repairs in a Contemporary Naval Conflict 25/03/2026Recent naval incidents in the Indian Ocean involving Iranian warships, the United States, and regional coastal States have drawn renewed attention to a body of law often assumed to belong to another era: the law of neutrality at sea. Reports that an Iranian warship was sunk by a US submarine south of Sri Lanka, followed […]Pornomo Rovan Astri Yoga
- The Protection of Journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna under International Humanitarian Law 24/03/2026Viktoriia Roshchyna, a Ukrainian journalist whose reporting focused on crime, human rights and Russia’s actions in occupied Ukraine, died in Russian captivity. She was a freelance journalist, working for various independent news outlets such as Ukrainska Pravda, as well as the Ukrainian service Radio Free Europe. Viktoriia disappeared on 3 August 2023. She was captured […]Natia Kalandarishvili-Mueller
- Attacks on dual-use objects and the prohibition of terrorising civilians: the attacks on Iran’s oil facilities 23/03/2026Late on Saturday, March 7, the Israeli military conducted a series of strikes against several oil storage facilities in and around Tehran, igniting large fires at the facilities. By the following morning, Iran’s capital was reported to be covered in thick smoke from the burning depots. Later on Sunday, reports emerged that “black” rain, saturated […]Lizaveta Tarasevich
- The Inter‑American Court’s Warning Shot: Illicit U.S. Firearms and the Hemispheric Duty States Keep Ignoring 23/03/2026Criminal organizations finance, procure, broker, transport, and illegally distribute U.S.‑made weapons throughout Latin America and the Caribbean to fuel political violence in the region. Latin America is experiencing a surge of violence that is neither spontaneous nor locally contained. It is engineered—manufactured, trafficked, and laundered through a hemispheric supply chain that begins overwhelmingly in the […]Juan Carlos Portilla
- Two Weeks in Review: 9—20 March 2026 22/03/2026For every complex problem, there is a solution that is clear, simple, and wrong. In a time of exceedingly complex problems, the last few weeks have seen some remarkably wrong “solutions”. Contributions to the blog over the last fortnight have grappled with these, not least the host of legal questions raised by the US’s ongoing […]Sebastian von Massow
- Announcements: Summer School on Digital Human Rights; CfP Freedom of the Seas and Freedom of the Individual Workshop; State Responsibility in Crisis Workshop; ORIL–UN Treaty Body Human Rights Case Law Reporters; Max Planck Masterclass, Dr. Ana Bobić; Genocide Convention at the ICJ Lecture; International Law and Peace in Ukraine Conference; War, Territory, and International Law Lecture 22/03/20261. Summer School on Digital Human Rights in Lund, June 2026. The Faculty of Law and the Raoul Wallenberg Institute for Human Rights at the University of Lund are hosting a Summer School in Digital Human Rights, which will take place in Lund, Sweden from 22 – 26 June 2026. This will be a residential, […]Mary Guest
- The Legality of the UK Permitting the US to Use British Bases to Stop Iranian Attacks on Shipping in the Strait of Hormuz 21/03/2026Yesterday, the UK Government announced a significant change in its policy of allowing the United States to use British military bases during its war on Iran, solely to stop Iranian attacks on countries in the Gulf – I previously examined that issue here, and there was also an extensive discussion in the comments to that […]Marko Milanovic
- Central Bank Sanctions Return to the CJEU 20/03/2026A Primer on the Russian Central Bank’s Legal Challenge to the Permanent Freezing of its Assets On March 3, 2026, the Central Bank of Russia (CBR) announced that it has recently filed an action for annulment under Article 263 TFEU challenging Council Regulation (EU) 2025/2600 before the General Court of the EU. This regulation (hereinafter: […]Philipp Kehl