Book event! This week Ntina Tzouvala discusses queer encounters and queer engagements with international law with editors and authors Claerwen O'Hara and regular co-host Tamsin Phillipa Paige.

In this episode, we explore what queer theory can teach us about international law — not just in relation to sexuality and gender, but as a tool for rethinking how law understands power, normativity, and difference. The panel discuss how queer approaches challenge the taken-for-granted assumptions and provide a lens for scholars, activists, and anyone seeking to reimagine justice on a global scale.

Recommendations include:

Claerwen O'Hara and Tamsin Phillipa Paige (eds), Queer Engagements with International Law: Times, Spaces, Imaginings (2025)

https://www.routledge.com/Queer-Engagements-with-International-Law-Times-Spaces-Imaginings/OHara-Paige/p/book/9781032643229?srsltid=AfmBOopQ4BhJS8P5Sx0fkcZD4pz8XBIKCnEWp3DdMOjq0yHVENZL6Q7N

Claerwen O'Hara and Tamsin Phillipa Paige (eds), Queer Encounters with International Law: Lives, Communities, Subjectivities (2025)

https://www.routledge.com/Queer-Encounters-with-International-Law-Lives-Communities-Subjectivities/Paige-OHara/p/book/9781032643045?srsltid=AfmBOoqkHSdqyc4fQ48xhySmAdAE7aKg2Z4HYo8-FUMhjqI1qR__R7Pw

Dianne Otto (ed), Queering International Law: Possibilities, Alliances, Complicities, Risks (2018)

https://www.routledge.com/Queering-International-Law-Possibilities-Alliances-Complicities-Risks/Otto/p/book/9780367886370?srsltid=AfmBOorTJz0gAv0KP37mUXtHaOImyhKk1eP-kKI5Vp-BBqnEgjjLm5oc

Music: Sam Barsh, Oils of Au Lait

This week we have another instalment in our "what everyone gets wrong about ..." classic cases series, focussing on the" Gabčíkovo-Nagymaros Project" or "Danube Dam" or "the great river heist" case. Tamsin Phillipa Paige explains to Imogen Saunders why this is much more than an environmental law case.

Music: Sam Barsh, Oils of Au Lait

This week we are discussing the dramatic series of events that resulted in former President of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, being transferred to the custody of the International Criminal Court. To discuss the case and its implications, we are joined by Ross Tugade and Dr Priya Pillai.

Recommendations:

The Filipino online news outlet Rappler: https://www.rappler.com/philippines/thing-to-know-prosecutor-vs-rodrigo-duterte-icc/ ;

Patricia Evangelista, "Some People Need Killing", https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/612869/some-people-need-killing-by-patricia-evangelista/ ;

The Philippines Commission on Human Rights 2022 report on killings in the ant-illegal drug campaign, https://chr2bucket.storage.googleapis.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/08154849/CHR-National-Report-April-2022-Full-Final.pdf ;

"On the President's orders", https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/on-the-presidents-orders/.

Music: Sam Barsh, Oils of Au Lait

What do podcasts bring to international law and legal study? This week Dr Tamsin Phillipa Paige discusses podcasts and their role in international law discourse with: Dr Kostia Gorobets, Assistant Professor at the University of Groningen, Başak Etkin, a PhD Scholar at the University of Groningen – both of Borderline Jurisprudence podcast fame – and Professor Douglas Guilfoyle, UNSW Canberra.

Recommendations:

Kostia recommends -

Solvej Balle's On the Calculation of Volume, https://www.ndbooks.com/book/on-the-calculation-of-volume-book-i/

Başak recommends -

My Favourite Cake, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt31015278/

Music: Sam Barsh, Oils of Au Lait

This week we continue our "what does everyone get wrong about classic case X" series. And today we're looking at the overquoted, under-authoritative, and deeply de-historicized "Caroline Case" (or, more accurately, the "Caroline Affair") with regular co-host Imogen Saunders. Digressions include a plea for accuracy, critical thinking skills and ... Elon Musk?

Recommendations:

Craig Forcese, "Destroying the Caroline: The Frontier Raid That Reshaped the Right to War"

https://irwinlaw.com/product/destroying-the-caroline/

"'We will make mistakes': Musk pressed on claim $50m of condoms sent to Gaza" (The Guardian)

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2025/feb/12/musk-says-he-will-make-mistakes-and-that-he-double-checks-with-trump-video

Music: Sam Barsh, Oils of Au Lait

In this week's episode, in light of 48 hours of the news cycle, Juliette McIntyre convenes the Called to the Bar team - Tamsin Phillipa Paige, Ntina Tzouvala, Imogen Saunders and Douglas Guilfoyle - to ask: does international law have a future? And if so, what does it look like without the US as the guarantor of international order?

Grab a drink and settle in. It's going to be a bumpy global order transition.

Recommendations include:

Tamsin Paige, "Petulant and Contrary: Approaches by the Permanent Five Members of the UN Security Council to the Concept of 'threat to the peace' under Article 39 of the UN Charter" (Chapter 1), https://brill.com/display/title/54194?language=en

Frank Moorhouse, "Dark Palace" (on the end of the League of Nations)

https://www.penguin.com.au/books/dark-palace-9780143790914

What Douglas was wearing: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:6224ogbnhmjhtpjoteynx4hk/post/3ljiyhoop342r

Music: Sam Barsh, Oils of Au Lait

What does the practise of international law look like at the day to day level? What is it like to be an international lawyer? This week Tamsin Phillipa Paige speaks to a panel of international lawyers with experience in the private and public sectors: Dr Sarah McCosker (Lexbridge Lawyers); CJ McKenzie (Office of International Law, Australian Attorney General's Department) and Commodore David Letts (Royal Australian Navy and University of Wollongong). All guests are speaking in their personal capacity and their views should not be attributed to their employers or clients, past or present.

Recommendations include:

Rob Mclaughlin, "‘Giving’ Operational Legal Advice: Context and Method" (2011) 50 Military Law and the Law of War Review 99 (paywall) https://www.elgaronline.com/view/journals/mllwr/50/1/article-p99.xml

Music: Sam Barsh, Oils of Au Lait

What is AUKUS - the trilateral security partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States? What is it meant to do – beyond replace Australia’s aging submarine fleet – and what are the international law issues and implications?

This week Douglas Guilfoyle talks all things AUKUS with Rob McLaughlin (University of Wollongong), Monique Cormier (Monash University) and Natalia Jevglevskaja (University of New South Wales).

Recommendations

Trevor Findlay, That Sinking Feeling: The AUKUS Submarines and the Nonproliferation Regime

https://www.internationalaffairs.org.au/australianoutlook/that-sinking-feeling-the-aukus-submarines-and-the-nonproliferation-regime/

William Greenwalt and Tob Corben, AUKUS Enablers? Assessing Defence Trade Control Reforms in Australia and the United States (United States Studies Centre, 2024), 8, https://www.ussc.edu.au/aukus-assessing-defence-trade-control-reforms-in-australia-and-the-united-states

In this week's episode Juliette McIntyre, Mike Becker (Trinity College Dublin) and Kyra Wigard (Utrecht University) discusses recent allegations of plagiarism at the International Court of Justice, its implications for public perceptions of the institution, and more widely. What ethical standards bind ICJ judges, or the judges of other international tribunals? Are such questions really new? What is the role of codes of ethics for international courts?

Recommendations:

Gleider Hernández, The International Court of Justice and the Judicial Function, https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-international-court-of-justice-and-the-judicial-function-9780199646630

Music: Sam Barsh, Oils of Au Lait

In this episode Douglas Guilfoyle and Juliette McIntyre discuss President Trump's startling plans to "own" Gaza and resettle all its inhabitants elsewhere, the equally startling number of international laws this breaks, and what the media gets wrong in covering it.