Jens Theilen

International law, populism and Palestine: an interview with Nahed Samour In this interview, Dr Richard Joyce and Professor Sundhya Pahuja are joined by German-Palestinian international legal scholar, Dr Nahed Samour, currently b

An important and wide-ranging interview with Nahed Samour on international law and Palestine, among other things on the role of law and narrative, on the relation between positivism and critique, and on transnational resistance: academic.oup.com/lril/advance...

Call for Papers: Special Issue of Feminist Legal Studies Feminist Responses to the Regression of Trans Rights: Strategies, Alliances, Hope Amidst continuing backlash against trans rights, recognition and inclusion, two recent decisions from the UK have substantially impacted not only trans people’s legal status but also legal and social narratives of sex, gender and identity. The narrative that trans inclusion has a chilling effect on the rights of others, particularly women, has been adopted uncritically by both the UK Supreme Court in For Women Scotland and the Office for Students in its finding that the University of Sussex’s trans-inclusion policy had a chilling effect on free speech. These cases highlight a backlash that has been ongoing for some time, and sparks debates and fear of what may lie in the near future for trans people and kin, as well as other gender-variant persons, not only in the UK, but across jurisdictions and in a global perspective. The discourse of the ‘gender critical’ movement is splintering both the feminist and LGBT+ movements globally, with some aligning politically with the Far- and Christian Right against trans rights, adopting their terminology of ‘gender ideology’ and potentially posing a wider threat to sexual and reproductive rights. While this a difficult situation for trans people, kin and allies, this special issue seeks to emphasise that legal battles – including battles (temporarily) lost – are also an opportunity to seek to reinforce old alliances and to form new ones, to find new legal frontiers and imaginaries, to reinforce the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of legal arguments as well as intergenerational memory of what feminist legal work is, has been and should be about. How, we ask, do these decisions (and those like them globally) reflect and reproduce structures of coloniality, heteronormativity and cisnormativity? What do these decisions add to critiques of legal feminism? What would be construct…

📣🏳️‍⚧️ Call for Papers

We are inviting papers for our special issue, “Feminist Responses to the Regression of Trans Rights: Strategies, Alliances, Hope.” The issue will be dedicated to trans-inclusive feminist legal analysis that addresses attacks on trans rights & lives.

Details below. Please share.

What’s in a Name? Genocide, the Universal and the Common in International Law

How does the struggle over the term "genocide" shape international law?
@isafei.bsky.social & members of #Ö examine genocide not only as mass killing but as the dismantling of the common - the social, cultural, & ecological relations that sustain communities. voelkerrechtsblog.org/whats-in-a-n...

A screenshot of the article’s abstract, entitled “The shifting frames of the Council of Europe: from totalitarianism to authoritarianism, from populism to democratic backsliding”

Another article from our special issue on frames of human rights is out: @esrademir.bsky.social’s fantastic piece on oppositional frames, analysing how concepts like authoritarianism and populism are used and what this tells us about the Council of Europe itself

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Introducing the Symposium ‘Knowledge Under Occupation: Academic Freedom and Palestine on the Global Stage’

a timely and important symposium at @voelkerrechtsblog.org :
‘Knowledge Under Occupation: Academic Freedom and Palestine on the Global Stage’

voelkerrechtsblog.org/introducing-...

In our article in @ljil-leiden.bsky.social @natasamav.bsky.social and I share our discomfort with equating justice to punishment in Palestine

Punishment is limited in terms of justice but also distorts responses, silences dissent and undermines the 'never again' promise

doi.org/10.1017/S092...

Resisting Erasure Why has Palestine become a defining fault line of contemporary politics?Challenging mainstream narratives that reduce Palestine to ancient hatreds, humanitarian tragedy, or legal abstractions, Resisti...

Today is the offical @versobooks.bsky.social release date of Resisting Erasure: Capital, Imperialism and Race in Palestine, by Adam Hanieh, myself and @rafeefz.bsky.social.

www.versobooks.com/en-gb/produc...

Vertrauen und Vertretbarkeit

Licht und Schatten im BVG-Urteil zu Ramstein – mit Blick auf mögliche Präzedenzwirkung für Waffenlieferungen nach Gaza. Ein lesenswerter Beitrag!
verfassungsblog.de/ramstein-voe...

Von Thunfisch und Panther bis zu Kritik am Beck Verlag ist alles dabei im Beitrag von @isalischewski.bsky.social zu “Genderverboten” an Schulen 🔥

elibrary.duncker-humblot.com/article/7560...

Vertrauen und Vertretbarkeit

@jtheilen.bsky.social und ich haben für @verfassungsblog.de das Ramstein-Urteil analysiert.
Trotz der sehr hohen Hürden, die das Gericht für staatliche Schutzpflichten aufstellt, wird klar: Bei Waffenlieferungen an Israel muss eine solche Pflicht greifen.

Great analysis and contextualisation of the IACtHR’s Advisory Opinion on the climate emergency by @juanauz.bsky.social

Extractive Capitalism Laleh Khalili reflects on the hidden stories behind late capitalism, from seafarers abandoned on debt-ridden container ships to the nefarious reach of consultancy firms and the cronyism that drives re...

Now available for preorder - Extractive Capitalism: How Commodities and Cronyism Drive the Global Economy by
@lalehkhalili.bsky.social

"Profound and compelling … A book that I couldn’t put down."
- Adam Hanieh

Civilizational Hierarchies and the Notion of ‘Europe’ in the European Convention on Human Rights Abstract. When the European Convention on Human Rights was adopted, several states parties were major colonial powers forcefully engaged in retaining that

Has the European Convention of Human Rights overcome its colonial origins? Jens T. Theilen argues that the civilizational hierarchies around the idea of ‘Europe’ still permeate contemporary understandings of ‘European consensus’ and the extraterritorial application of the ECHR.

You cannot pinkwash genocide: Why the (queer) refugee law studies community should be talking about Palestine – and why it is not - Feministiqa You cannot pinkwash genocide: Why the (queer) refugee law studies community should be talking about...

We wrote a thing about academic silencing of Palestine within the (feminist/queer) refugee law community. Hope you enjoy the read 🍉

feministiqa.net/en/you-canno...

#48: Geschichten des Völkerrechts: Von Grotius zu kritischen Ansätzen

🎙️ PODCAST: @erik.d-64.social und ich sprechen in der neuesten Folge des Völkerrechtspodcasts (@voelkerrechtsblog.org ) über Völkerrechtsgeschichte(n)

Unsere Gäst:innen sind Prof. Dr. Miloš Vec (Wien) sowie @gonzalezhauck.bsky.social (Hamburg).

voelkerrechtsblog.org/de/48-geschi...

ARTICLE: Jens T. THEILEN, "Civilizational Hierarchies and the Notion of ‘Europe’ in the European Convention on Human Rights" (EJIL XXXVI (2025), nr. 1, 113-142) (image source: OUP ) Abstract: When the European Convention on Human Rights was adopted, several states parties were major colonial powers...

ARTICLE: Jens T. THEILEN, "Civilizational Hierarchies and the Notion of ‘Europe’ in the European Convention on Human Rights" (EJIL XXXVI (2025), nr. 1, 113-142)

@ejiltalk.bsky.social

esclh.blogspot.com/2025/07/arti...

Aww thank you! Made my day 🥰

Herzlichen Glückwunsch, well deserved!

Editorial #46: We Need A Queerer Legal Imagination

#Ö-Editorial 46 is here! Isabel Lischewski calls for a queerer legal imagination—one that resists flattening, embraces complexity, and reimagines international law beyond normativity and rigidity.
#LGBTQIA+Rights, #Pride
voelkerrechtsblog.org/editorial-46...

😍

The article’s abstract, available at the link in the post

Another paper from our special issue on Frames of European human rights is out: “Seriously ill migrants in European human rights: Framing global inequalities” by @vanditak.bsky.social — absolute must-read on humanitarianism, responsibility & structural inequality

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

The Politics of Vision, Targeting, and Palestine ‘The whole history of Palestinian struggle has to do with the desire to be visible.’ Edward Said On the evening of March 3rd, 1991, Rodney King, a

A really superb piece by Amin Parsa: 'The key to understanding the impact of advanced visual technology of targeting... requires acknowledging how the laws of war themselves produce an ‘order of visibility’ in order to legitimize lethal violence' criticallegalthinking.com/2025/06/09/t...

A flyer for the roundtable with a picture of multiple Trumps holding an executive order where only his signature is visible. For the full text (it is long), please message me or leave a reply.

Biography of the speakers. It is a long text and doesn't fit the space here. For the full text, please message me or leave a reply.

ROUNDTABLE on Intellectual Property and Industrial Property (in the Era of Trump)

Wellcome Collection, London | 19 June | 3:30-5pm GMT

In-person and online & open to public

With @mbarber.bsky.social @kathybowrey.bsky.social @70sbachchan.bsky.social Vitor Ido, Svitlana Lebendeko, Caoimhe Ring, me

Now published open access in the current issue of @ejiltalk.bsky.social — in wonderful company including @kalokyip.bsky.social on the right to life during hostilities and @gonzalezhauck.bsky.social on systematicity in the liberal internationalist ethos

🔗 academic.oup.com/ejil/issue/3...

Out now in open access and sure to be an absolute banger — can’t wait to read! 🌱

Development as Domination: Settler Tourism in Western Sahara and the Commodification of Occupied Territories in Trumpist International Law [Andrea Maria Pelliconi is a Lecturer in Human Rights Law & Global Justice at the University of Southampton, where she researches demographic engineering, displacement, and inter…

Happy to share my first piece in @opiniojuris.bsky.social on "Settler Tourism in #WesternSahara and the Commodification of Occupied Territories", where I take aim at @ryanairofficial.bsky.social & others and draw comparisons with Trump's plans for Palestine as Riviera
opiniojuris.org/2025/05/23/d...

“[T]he criminalization approach provides the Court with an alibi for not recognizing or attending to the deeply structural racialized, colonial, sexual, gendered, and homophobic violence in Europe, particularly but not only against Roma communities and Black and Muslim migrants”

"Gaza is unique in the annals of starvation because of the simplicity of this calculation...."

"Israel controls every shekel, every sack of flour, every connection to the outside world."