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EJIL: The Podcast!

by European Journal of International Law · English · Learning

EJIL: The Podcast! aims to provide in-depth, expert and accessible discussion of international law issues in contemporary international and national affairs. It features the Editors of the European Journal of International Law and of its blog, EJIL: Talk! The podcast is produced by the Europe

New episodes: Monthly
Typical length: 48 min
Latest: 13 Oct 2026
Language: English

Latest episode

13 Oct 2026 · 45 minNew

Episode 46: Protection of Civilians: Crisis, Commentary and Compliance

The number and extent of today’s armed conflicts, and the crisis of compliance with international humanitarian law (IHL), are well-recognized. In his annual report on the Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict, the UN Secretary-General has underscored how “ [i]nconsistent standards, assertions of exceptional circumstances and hollow calls for compliance [have] undermined respect for international humanitarian law ”. Similarly, the President of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has acknowledged that the problem is not only about a lack of compliance, but active disregard…

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Earlier episodes 29 most recent

E45 · 13 Aug 2026 · 33 min
Episode 45: The Nuclear Order Under Threat
The international nuclear realm is under severe strain. Since the 1960s, the international community has constructed a dense web of laws to govern nuclear matters. However, over the past decade, a wave of nuclear weapons activity has sparked concerns that we have entered a new nuclear age. This episode takes a hard look at the international legal issues surrounding this instability in the international nuclear order: whether the network of laws addressing nuclear non-proliferation, control and disarmament is capable of responding to the current challenges, as well as the possibility that it…
E44 · 15 Jun 2026 · 36 min
Episode 44: One Strait, Many Chokepoints: International Law and the New Geopolitics of Energy
The war in the Middle East has plunged the world into yet another crisis. Days are paced by minute-by-minute updates: at first, tragic reports of civilian deaths and incendiary threats from US President Donald Trump, now fragile peace negotiations between the United States and Iran. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has spiked oil prices and placed strategic energy chokepoints at the centre of international debate. But beyond the immediacy of events, this moment offers a window onto something deeper: the international political economy that both shapes this conflict and is reshaped by it.…
E43 · 23 Apr 2026 · 53 min
Episode 43: Sudan—Does international law have anything to say?
The situation in Sudan is often described as the world's worst humanitarian crisis. Going by the numbers, it could well be more than 150,000 people have died. More than 12 million people have been displaced. More than 21 million people are in a situation of acute food insecurity. But this framing of a humanitarian crisis, or worse, a humanitarian tragedy, seems to deplete the situation of agency, as if the situation is unfortunate, collateral damage of something that is inevitable. This framing stands in contrast to that of other situations of intense violence, for instance, Ukraine,…
E42 · 7 Apr 2026 · 50 min
Episode 42: Russia, Imperial Continuities and Histories of International Law
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…
3 Mar 2026 · 4 min
Episode 41: Reading Recommendations
Panelists Michelle Ratton Sanchez and Nicolás M. Perrone share reading recommendations on some of the themes in Ep 41: Thinking through Rupture in International Economic Law: Views from Latin America
E41 · 3 Mar 2026 · 50 min
Episode 41: Thinking through Rupture in International Economic Law: Views from Latin America
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…
E40 · 23 Dec 2025 · 57 min
Episode 40: Palestinian Legal Frontiers: SC Res 2803 and beyond
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…
E39 · 14 Nov 2025 · 47 min
Episode 39: Holding the Line
In this episode, Philippa Webb and Marko Milanovic are joined by Nicolas Angelet and Oona Hathaway to discuss the legality of the US strikes against suspected drug boats in the Caribbean and the additional threats made by the United States against Venezuela, which include a possible land invasion. The hosts and their guests then turn to the recent UNRWA advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice, discussing some of the interesting questions that it raises, including the inviolability of UN premises during armed conflict. In doing so, they also reflect on the downward spiral of…
E38 · 16 Oct 2025 · 51 min
Episode 38: Non-intervention— past, present and future
Nehal Bhuta & Megan Donaldson We 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)…
E37 · 30 Jul 2025 · 51 min
Episode 37: The ICJ’s Advisory Opinion on Climate Obligations: Remarkable, Radical and Robust
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…
E36 · 25 Jul 2025 · 59 min
Episode 36: The Scourge of War
In this episode, Dapo Akande, Marko Milanovic and Philippa Webb are joined by Tom Dannenbaum to discuss two sets of issues. First, the legality of the use of force by Israel and the United States against Iran, and specifically its nuclear programme, from the standpoint of the jus ad bellum . The discussion turns around the possible justifications that Israel can give for its use of force, including the notion of stopping an imminent armed attack by Iran. Second, the recent judgment of the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights in the interstate case of Ukraine and the…
E35 · 30 Jun 2025 · 42 min
Episode 35: Human Mobility and International Law
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…
E34 · 5 Jun 2025 · 41 min
Episode 34: In the Family: Family Tropes in International Law
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…
E33 · 2 May 2025 · 48 min
Episode 33: Owning the Future? International Law and Technology as a Critical Project
International law operates in a world of rapid technological transformation. From the battlefield to the border, from online content moderation to open-source investigation, from humanitarianism to development, from counterterrorism to migration management, practices of central concern to international lawyers are progressively altered by the introduction of new technological tools. Many of these developments are troubling. The use of advanced algorithmic targeting tools used by Israel in Gaza instantiates both the tremendous civilian harm that data-driven technologies amplify and inflict,…
E32 · 18 Mar 2025 · 48 min
Episode 32: No Country for Women: Lawyering for Gender Justice in Afghanistan
Since returning to power in 2021, the Taliban has sought to reverse Afghan women’s hard-won progress toward gender equality. Through dozens of decrees, policies, and statements, it has targeted the autonomy and rights of women and girls, barring them from public life and severely restricting their basic freedoms. Yet, Afghan women have refused to accept their political, social, and economic erasure. Both inside the country and within the Afghan diaspora, they have protested the Taliban’s edicts in domestic and international fora, often at great personal peril. In this episode of the EJIL…
E31 · 10 Feb 2025 · 47 min
Episode 31: Gradually, then Suddenly - Climate, Trade and the Charter Order in Precarious Times
Christina Voigt, Andrew Lang and Mona Ali Khalil join Megan Donaldson to reflect on the present moment in international law from the perspectives of the climate, trade and security regimes. The conversation brings out divergent senses of the history of the present; perceptions of how deep the current dissensus is; and views on the avenues open to lawyers today. (For context, and as if to underline the rapidity of geopolitical shifts at present, the window between the start of recording and the end of editing saw the US initiation of withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, announcements of major…
E30 · 9 Dec 2024 · 58 min
Episode 30: On the Precipice: The International Criminal Court and State Immunity
In this episode, Paola Gaeta and Roger O’Keefe join Marko Milanovic and Philippa Webb to discuss recent developments at the International Criminal Court. The Court has now issued arrest warrants, or arrest warrants have been sought by the Prosecutor, for several serving heads of state or government of states that are not parties to the ICC Statute. Both states parties and non-states parties are now reacting to these warrants, with varying degrees of support or condemnation. The hosts and their guests discuss these developments, focusing on the Court’s jurisprudence on whether high-ranking…
E29 · 18 Oct 2024 · 48 min
Episode 29: Echoes from the Invisible College
In this EJIL:The Podcast! Luíza Leão Soares Pereira, Fabio Costa Morosini and Artur Simonyan join Editor-in-Chief Sarah Nouwen. Inspired by their articles on Brazilian textbooks as Markers and Makers of International Law and on International Lawyers in Post-Soviet Eurasia , the conversation explores how students encounter international law during their studies, whether a study of textbooks in Brazil and Post-Soviet Eurasia leads to similar findings as Anthea Roberts’s pathbreaking study on how international law is taught in the states that are the five permanent members of the UN Security…
E28 · 12 Sep 2024 · 1 hr 17 min
Episode 28: Unlawful Occupation, Annexation and Segregation: The ICJ’s Advisory Opinion on Palestine
We asked three distinguished Palestinian lawyers on to the podcast to discuss the ICJ’s Advisory Opinion. They had views. Hosted by Nehal Bhuta, Professor of International Law at the University of Edinburgh and featuring Professor Ardi Imseis, Queen’s University, Dr Nimer Sultany, SOAS, and former PLO negotiation team member and lawyer, Diana Buttu.
E27 · 7 Aug 2024 · 1 hr 4 min
Episode 27: Preoccupied: The ICJ’s Palestine Advisory Opinion
In this episode, Dapo Akande, Marko Milanovic and Philippa Webb are joined by Yuval Shany, and discuss the recent advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice on the Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem . The hosts and their guest explore the Court’s reasoning on how violations of international law in the occupied Palestinian territories rendered unlawful Israel’s continued presence there. They also examine various ambiguities in the Court’s opinion and what drove them, on matters such…
E26 · 19 Apr 2024 · 54 min
Episode 26: Hunger for Thought
We need to talk about hunger. After seven decades of a decline in mass death from starvation, starvation is now a reality for millions of people. And most of this starvation is not due to natural disasters but man-made. In this episode of EJIL: The Podcast, EJIL Editor in Chief Sarah Nouwen speaks with Michael Fakhri , the UN Rapporteur on the Right to Food and professor at the University of Oregon, and Alex de Waal , a leading thinker on humanitarian issues and Executive Director of the World Peace Foundation. Together, they discuss the strength and weaknesses of various areas of…
E25 · 8 Apr 2024 · 43 min
Episode 25: Do We Have a Responsibility toward Future Generations?
What is the Alpha and Omega of Climate Control discourse? Surely it is Intergenerational responsibility. Our responsibility towards future generations. Yet, in January 2023 EJIL published Against Future Generations , by Stephen Humphreys, which challenges this comfort zone. Needless to say, the article created a climatic disruption. Listen to the Podcast, moderated by Editor in Chief Joseph Weiler, in which Humphreys engages with three of his critics, Margaretha Wewerinke-Singh, Ayan Garg and Shubhangi Agarwalla (For their written reply, see here ).
E24 · 27 Feb 2024 · 43 min
Episode 24: The Third World: At the Centre of International Law?
Does the decision of the International Court of Justice with respect to Gaza illustrate the influence of Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL)? Has TWAIL perhaps become ‘mainstream’? And how germane are some of the critiques that have been levelled against TWAIL? In this 24th episode of EJIL:The Podcast! , Antony Anghie, one of TWAIL's founders, discusses the rise and critiques of Third World Approaches to International Law with the authors of three Afterwords to his already classic EJIL Foreword ‘Rethinking International Law: A TWAIL Retrospective ’: Andreas von Arnauld ,…
E23 · 15 Jan 2024 · 55 min
Episode 23: Unhappy New Year! Genocide in the Courtroom
In this episode, Dapo Akande, Marko Milanovic and Philippa Webb, joined by Mike Becker, discuss the oral hearings before the International Court of Justice on provisional measures in the South Africa v. Israel case, in which it is alleged that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. How did the hearings go, what will the Court do now, and what will it eventually do on the merits? The discussion then moves to exploring recent trends in international litigation, and concludes by briefly examining the recent strikes by the US and UK on the Houthis in Yemen.
E22 · 30 Nov 2023 · 27 min
Episode 22: Organizing International Organizations
International organizations are often expected to solve problems that states cannot or do not solve. But how should we understand international organizations? Marking the year-long symposium ‘Hidden Gems in International Organizations Law’ in the European Journal of International Law , this podcast discusses how international organizations have been theorized by various scholars and practitioners. Special attention is paid to international organization practitioner SKB Asante and scholar Rao Geping . Hosted by EJIL Editor in Chief Sarah Nouwen , the discussants are Kehinde Olaoye , Yifeng…
E21 · 25 Sep 2023 · 29 min
Episode 21: The ICC’s Other Africa Bias?
The International Criminal Court has been frequently accused of a bias against Africa in that all its defendants thus far have been from Africa. But might the ICC suffer from another bias that disadvantages Africa? EJIL editor-in-chief Sarah Nouwen discusses with Stewart Manley and Pardis M. Tehrani who, together with Rajah Rasiah , have authored the EJIL article ‘The (Non-)Use of African Law by the International Criminal Court’ (free access!).
E20 · 6 Apr 2023 · 31 min
Episode 20: Disordering International Law
Much of international law is about ordering. But in her article in issue 33(3) of the European Journal of International Law, Michelle Staggs Kelsall calls for the disordering of international law. This is not an appeal to create more chaos in the world – there seems to be plenty of it. It is an invitation to open up new ways of thinking about and in international law. Tune in to her discussion with Luis Eslava , Andrea Bianchi and podcast host Sarah Nouwen , to learn … and to unlearn.
E19 · 24 Mar 2023 · 1 hr 2 min
Episode 19: From Russia with War: Part Deux
In this episode Marko Milanovic, Dapo Akande and Philippa Webb are joined by Oona Hathaway (Gerard C. and Bernice Latrobe Smith Professor of International Law at Yale Law School) to discuss big legal issues arising from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, one year on, including the arrest warrant against Vladimir Putin, the application of international humanitarian law in the conflict, and problems regarding reparation and immunities of frozen Russian assets.
E18 · 28 Feb 2023 · 50 min
Episode 18: Be Careful What You Ask For
In this episode Dapo Akande, Marko Milanovic and Philippa Webb are joined by Philippe Sands and Margaretha Wewerinke-Singh. They reflect on the role and significance of advisory opinions by international courts, particularly in the context of various current efforts to litigate legal issues regarding climate change in such advisory proceedings in several different courts. They also discuss previous high-profile advisory proceedings before the ICJ, including the Nuclear Weapons, Wall and Kosovo cases, focusing on the different types of advisory cases, their legal and political purposes, the…

About EJIL: The Podcast!

EJIL: The Podcast! is a English learning podcast from European Journal of International Law. Melo plays each episode straight from the publisher's own feed — no ads added, no account needed — and remembers where you stopped, in this browser only.

Publisher: European Journal of International Law
Language: English
Category: Learning
New episodes: Monthly
Typical length: 48 min
Latest episode: 13 Oct 2026
Feed: RSS — paste into any podcast app
Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1508367340

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