Brazil’s 1988 Constitution gives international treaties different legal status depending on their subject and approval process. This article examines treaty incorporation, the STF’s supralegal doctrine, Constitutional Amendment No. 45, and Brazil’s relationships with the International Court of Justice, International Criminal Court, and Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

Command responsibility establishes when military commanders and other superiors may be held criminally liable for crimes committed by subordinates. This article examines effective control, knowledge requirements, failures to prevent or punish crimes, ICC Article 28, and the landmark Čelebići and Bemba judgments.

Collective security under the UN Charter enables the Security Council to address threats to international peace through sanctions and military enforcement. This article examines the legal foundations of Chapter VII, the historical experiences of Korea, Kuwait, and Libya, and the limitations imposed by the veto, political disagreements, and dependence on member states.

A coup d'état is usually unconstitutional under domestic law, but international law does not impose one universal rule making every coup unlawful. This article explains regional anti-coup regimes, human rights, non-intervention, state responsibility, recognition, and state continuity.

Hybrid courts combine national and international elements to prosecute serious crimes, but they do not follow a single legal model. This article examines the Special Court for Sierra Leone, Cambodia’s Extraordinary Chambers, the Special Criminal Court in the Central African Republic, and the Kosovo Specialist Chambers, comparing their legal foundations, jurisdiction, judicial structures, and institutional limits.

UNCLOS compulsory conciliation allows states to initiate settlement proceedings in certain maritime disputes without the other party’s consent to that particular proceeding. This article examines when the procedure applies, how commissions operate under Annex V, and why their recommendations are non-binding. It also considers the Timor Sea conciliation between Timor-Leste and Australia.

How is the UN Secretary-General selected, and why can one permanent Security Council member block a candidate? This article explains the appointment procedure under Article 97 of the UN Charter, including nominations, straw polls, the General Assembly’s authority, the disputed 1950 precedent, and reforms shaping the 2026 selection process.

The proposed EU KIDS Act would restrict independent social media accounts for children under 15 and introduce safeguards for minors across digital services. This article explains the age limits, parental controls, privacy protections, AI chatbot rules, and how the proposal would interact with existing EU law.

Territorial waters, formally known as the territorial sea, may extend up to 12 nautical miles from legally determined baselines. Coastal States exercise sovereignty in this zone, but that authority is limited by rules on innocent passage, foreign ships, maritime boundaries, and neighboring zones such as the EEZ.

Innocent passage allows foreign ships to navigate through another State’s territorial sea under UNCLOS. The regime balances coastal-State sovereignty with navigational rights, defining when passage is lawful, when it becomes non-innocent, and what measures coastal States may take.

Who owns Antarctica is a more complex legal question than it first appears. Seven states maintain territorial claims, but the Antarctic Treaty preserves those positions without resolving sovereignty, while regulating science, jurisdiction, environmental protection, and resources.

Piracy under international law is narrowly defined by UNCLOS and does not cover every act of maritime violence. The legal regime turns on Article 101, maritime location, the two-ship requirement, universal jurisdiction, and the distinction between piracy and armed robbery against ships.

UN peacekeeping developed through practice rather than an express Charter provision. Its legal framework draws on Security Council mandates, consent, impartiality, rules on the use of force, status of forces agreements, international humanitarian law, human rights, and the rules governing attribution and responsibility.

International environmental law governs environmental protection, transboundary harm, shared resources, and global environmental risks through treaties, customary international law, and general international law. This article explains prevention, precaution, environmental impact assessment, sustainable development, major treaty regimes, compliance, and State responsibility.

Extradition allows one State to surrender an accused or convicted person to another for prosecution or punishment. Its legality depends on treaties, domestic law, refusal grounds, human rights obligations, and, in some cases, duties to extradite or prosecute.

Diplomatic protection allows a State to invoke another State’s international responsibility for injury suffered by a protected national or legal person. Its operation depends on nationality of claims, exhaustion of local remedies, corporate protection rules, and the relationship between general international law and direct treaty-based remedies.

State succession raises difficult questions about what happens when one State replaces another in responsibility for a territory. This article examines continuity, treaty obligations, property, State debts, nationality, organizational membership, and State responsibility under international law.

State recognition in international law determines how States accept and legally treat contested claims to statehood. This article examines the criteria of statehood, recognition theories, legal effects, non-recognition, withdrawal, UN membership, and cases including Kosovo, Palestine, Taiwan, and Northern Cyprus.

International Criminal Law governs individual criminal responsibility for crimes under international law. This article explains its sources, historical development, core crimes, modes of liability, ICC jurisdiction, immunities, national prosecutions, and the limits of international criminal justice.

The Principle of Non-Intervention in International Law protects States against coercive interference in matters they are legally entitled to decide freely. This article examines its customary basis, the coercion test, leading ICJ cases, economic pressure, elections, and cyber operations.

The exclusive economic zone gives coastal states extensive rights over natural resources and specified activities without extending territorial sovereignty to 200 nautical miles. This article explains EEZ rights under UNCLOS, fisheries jurisdiction, navigation, offshore resources, islands, and maritime delimitation.

The law of the sea regulates how states use, control, and share the oceans. This article explains UNCLOS, maritime zones, navigation rights, the exclusive economic zone, continental shelf, high seas, resource rights, and the settlement of maritime disputes.

A ceasefire suspends specified hostilities but does not necessarily end an armed conflict or create peace. This article explains how ceasefires are formed, what they regulate, how violations are assessed, and when they can support a political settlement.

An armed attack is more than an unlawful use of force. This article explains the Article 51 threshold, the ICJ’s scale-and-effects test, direct and indirect attacks, non-state actors, cyber operations, repeated incidents, and the legal consequences of classification.

Article 2(4) of the UN Charter establishes the general prohibition on interstate threats and uses of armed force. This article explains its historical development, legal scope, relationship with self-defense and Security Council authority, contested exceptions, and the consequences of an unlawful use of force.

Monism and dualism offer competing explanations of how international law operates within domestic legal systems. This article examines reception, constitutional rank, direct effect, customary international law, individual rights, and comparative state practice.

War crimes are serious violations of international humanitarian law, the body of rules governing armed conflict, for which individuals can be prosecuted and punished (ICRC, 2005).

ICJ preliminary objections determine whether the Court has jurisdiction, whether claims are admissible, and which issues may proceed to the merits. This article explains the governing rules, leading cases, procedural effects, and limits of preliminary adjudication.

Enforcement jurisdiction determines when a state may arrest, search, seize, compel, intercept, or execute against persons, property, vessels, aircraft, or data. This article examines territorial limits, lawful authority abroad, immunity, human rights safeguards, and the consequences of unlawful coercive action.

Prescriptive jurisdiction determines when a state may apply its laws to conduct, persons, property, or relationships linked to more than one country. The doctrine governs extraterritorial regulation, overlapping sovereign claims, universal and treaty-based jurisdiction, and the legal limits of national lawmaking power.

Extraterritorial Jurisdiction allows states to regulate certain conduct, persons, markets, or effects beyond their borders, but its legality depends on the jurisdictional basis, territorial sovereignty, immunity, procedural rights, and enforcement method. This article explains the governing principles, major areas of application, and a practical framework for assessing cross-border claims.

Adjudicatory jurisdiction concerns the authority of national courts to hear disputes involving foreign parties, conduct, property, or judgments. This article examines its legal foundations, customary limits, immunities, treaty rules, enforcement barriers, and the unresolved genuine-link debate.

The effects doctrine allows states to claim jurisdiction over foreign conduct that produces significant consequences within their territory. This article examines its development in United States and European Union competition law, its uncertain status in public international law, and the limits required to prevent excessive extraterritorial regulation.

The protective principle allows a state to apply criminal law to foreign conduct by non-nationals when that conduct directly attacks vital state functions. This article explains its doctrinal basis, its limits, its relationship with territoriality and universal jurisdiction, and its risks when national security claims are stretched too far.

Passive Personality Jurisdiction is a disputed basis of extraterritorial criminal law. It allows a state to prosecute certain foreign offenses against its nationals, but its use depends on sovereignty, legality, fair trial rights, treaty practice, and restraint.

ICJ Advisory Opinions are authoritative judicial statements requested by authorized UN organs and specialized agencies. They are not binding judgments, but they can clarify binding rules of international law, shape diplomatic practice, influence litigation, and guide how states and institutions understand legal obligations.

ICJ compulsory jurisdiction is one of the most misunderstood expressions in public international law. It does not mean that the International Court of Justice has automatic authority over every legal dispute between States.

The ICJ Provisional Measures occupy an unusual position in international adjudication: the International Court of Justice may act before the facts are fully tested, before the merits are argued, and before jurisdiction is finally confirmed, yet the order it gives can bind the parties as a matter of international law.

The responsibility of international organizations is never only a question of institutional accountability. It begins with attribution: the legal process by which an act or omission is connected to the organization itself.

The doctrine of discovery is one of the most consequential legal ideas in the history of colonial international law. It allowed European empires, and later settler states, to convert arrival in Indigenous territories into claims of priority, sovereignty, land control, and political superiority.

Jus cogens is one of the few doctrines in public international law that openly challenges the idea that State consent can validate almost any legal arrangement.

Subjective and Objective Territorial Jurisdiction addresses a central question in public international law: when is a cross-border event sufficiently connected to a state’s territory to justify the application of that state’s law? The answer turns on a disciplined distinction.

The drug cartels terrorist designation has turned a familiar organized crime problem into a difficult question of public international law. Drug cartels have long been prosecuted through criminal law, extradition treaties, drug-control conventions, asset-freezing regimes, and police cooperation.

What is a Refugee is often answered too quickly. Public debate tends to use the word as a broad description of suffering, flight, or vulnerability. International refugee law uses it differently.

Climate Change is now a security risk because it weakens the material conditions that allow states, communities, and legal systems to function: stable coastlines, predictable water supplies, reliable food production, habitable territory, public health, and effective institutions.

Diplomatic immunity protects diplomats from certain forms of jurisdiction and coercive action in the receiving State, but the protection is not unlimited. This article explains who is protected, the main Vienna Convention rules, the limits of immunity, waiver, persona non grata, and when immunity ends

Common Article 3 is the treaty provision that provides minimum humanitarian protection to people caught in a non-international armed conflict. It applies when violence is no longer mere disorder, criminality, riot, or isolated terrorism, but has reached the level of armed conflict involving State forces and organized armed groups, or organized armed groups fighting each other.

State Responsibility explained clearly: attribution, breach, reparation, countermeasures, and how international law holds States accountable.

The protection of journalists in armed conflict lies at the intersection of civilian protection, military operations, public accountability, and control over wartime information. Journalists document facts that parties to conflict may prefer to conceal, including civilian casualties, detention practices, sieges, forced displacement, attacks on protected objects, and alleged international crimes.

The Minab School Strike has already emerged as one of the most legally significant incidents reported during the 2026 Iran war. On 28 February 2026, during the opening phase of joint United States and Israeli attacks on Iran, the Shajareh Tayyebeh primary school in Minab was struck during school hours.