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

32 Group Therapy: So Long and Thanks for all the International Law

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

34. Called to the Borderline: International Jurisprudence over Drinks

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


35. Duterte at the International Criminal Court

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

36. What everyone gets wrong about the Danube Dam case

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

37. Queer Encounters and Queer Engagements with International Law

In this week's episode, Imogen Saunders talks to trade policy expert and author Dmitry Grozoubinski about President Trump's tariff policy. (If policy is not to strong a word.) K-Pop and Dungeons and Dragons may also rate a mention.

Recommendations:

Dmitry Grozoubinski, ‘Why Politicians Lie About Trade…’:  https://www.amazon.com.au/Why-Politicians-Lie-About-Trade/dp/1914487117

If books could kill: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/if-books-could-kill/id1651876897;  https://open.spotify.com/show/2khJBoF73ujIATWUFtSxLD#login

Imogen Saunders: Populism, Backlash and the Ongoing Use of the World Trade Organization Dispute Settlement System: State Responses to the Appellate Body Crisis (for a history of the AB crisis): https://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1710&context=mjil

Music: Sam Barsh, Oils of Au Lait

38. Trump's Tariffs (FAAFO)

Space law! What is it? This week Tamsin Phillipa Paige speaks to Stacey Henderson and 
Cris van Eijk to find out! 

Recommendations!

On the 'other' bi- and plurilateral space treaties:
•	Jean-Frederic Morin, 'Space Actors and Governance Explorer' (2024) www.institutions.space.
•	Pauline Pic, Philippe Evoy and Jean-Frédéric Morin, ‘Outer Space as a Global Commons: An Empirical Study of Space Arrangements’ (2023) 17 International Journal of the Commons 288: https://doi.org/10.5334/ijc.1271.

On the shifting critical geography of space-as-environment:
•	Valerie Olson and Lisa Messeri, ‘Beyond the Anthropocene: Un-Earthing an Epoch’ (2015) 6 Environment and Society 28: https://www.jstor.org/stable/26204949.
•	Lisa Ruth Rand, ‘Space Is the Place: Extraplanetary Disorder in Histories of Science’ (2024) 9 BJHS Themes 59: https://doi.org/10.1017/bjt.2024.27.

On space environmentalism:
•	Alessandra Marino, ‘Astroenvironmentalism as SF: Bordering (and Ordering) Otherworldly Ecologies’ (2023) 15 Environmental Humanities 25: https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919-10216140.
•	The Center for Space Environmentalism (2025): https://www.spaceenvironmentalism.org.

On the coloniality and colonial harms involved in space activity and space law:
•	Karlie Noon and Krystal de Napoli, Sky Country (Margo Neale ed, Thames and Hudson 2022), available here.
•	Cris van Eijk, ‘The Exclusive Making of Space Law’ [2025] Leiden Journal of International Law [FirstView]: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0922156524000554.

On space archaeology:
•	In general: Alice Gorman, ‘Contact Zones and Outer Space Environments: A Feminist Archaeological Analysis of Space Habitats’ in James SJ Schwartz, Linda Billings and Erika Nesvold (eds), Reclaiming Space: Progressive and Multicultural Visions of Space Exploration (OUP 2023), 215-231: https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197604793.003.0018.
•	On her recent collaboration on archaeology aboard the ISS: Justin St P Walsh and others, ‘Archaeology in Space: The Sampling Quadrangle Assemblages Research Experiment (SQuARE) on the International Space Station. Report 1: Squares 03 and 05’ (2024) 19 PLOS ONE e0304229: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0304229.

Fiction!
•	Maya Hoshimoto in Yume Kitasei's the Stardust Grail, available here.

Animal pictures:

Phasma: https://bsky.app/profile/staceyhenderson.bsky.social/post/3lb74z6agqk2d
The Admiral: https://bsky.app/profile/pagingdrpaige.bsky.social/post/3lnxepmkvac23 

Music: Sam Barsh, Oils of Au Lait


39. Space Law

Given the recent papal conclave, this week Juliette McIntyre discusses with Ntina Tzouvala and Douglas Guilfoyle two of the textbook 'oddities' of international law, the statehood of Vatican City and the sovereign order of the Knights of Malta. Content warning for darker themes towards the end of the episode.

Recommendations:

Brad Mehldau, Live in Tokyo (album) https://open.spotify.com/album/7sXzZ0Rdqz2VU62t4MtCfs

Sinners (movie) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt31193180/

Music: Sam Barsh, Oils of Au Lait

40. The Vatican and the Knights of Malta: oddities of international law?

This week Dr Tamsin Phillipa Paige is joined by Matteo Bassetti and Manon Beury to examine the UK Supreme Court decision in For Women Scotland Ltd v The Scottish Ministers. In this case the Supreme Court ruled that a gender recognition certificate does not change a person's legal sex for the purposes of the 2010 Equality Act. The episode explores both the significant implications this has for the human rights of trans people but also asks - why do human rights courts seem to find trans rights so difficult?

41. The Scottish Ministers Case and Trans Rights as Human Rights

What is it about piracy that causes international lawyers to lose all common sense? This week, in a twist on our “what everyone gets wrong about...” series, Juliette McIntyre talks to Douglas Guilfoyle and Tamsin Phillipa Paige about what drives them mad in piracy scholarship. And what is the crime of piracy, really? How old is it? And where does it come from? Fasten your seatbelts for a bumpy jurisprudential ride. 

Recommendations:
Tamsin Phillipa Paige, “The Whore That Lost Everything”: The Tyranny of Law and the Queer Feminisation of Soft Power as Explored in Black Sails, https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/pol-2023-2014/html

Douglas Guilfoyle, The Laws of War and the Fight against Somali Piracy: Combatants or Criminals?, https://law.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/1686284/Guilfoyle.pdf

Black Sails (TV Series 2014–2017), http://imdb.com/title/tt2375692/

Our Flag Means Death (TV Series 2022–2023), https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11000902/


42. Piracy and Madness

This week Tamsin Phillipa Paige and Douglas Guilfoyle discuss the IDF's interdiction of the Madleen aid vessel bound for Gaza, the law of blockade in naval warfare, and its contested relationship with the crime of starvation.

Sidebar: we discuss hypotheticals in cases of state responsibility for interdicting vessels at sea and the possibility of ITLOS hearing cases under UNCLOS - we should have noted in this particular case Israel is not a party to UNCLOS.

Recommendations:

Douglas Guilfoyle, The Mavi Marmara Incident and Blockade in Armed Conflict, https://academic.oup.com/bybil/article/81/1/171/329512

Phillip Drew, The Law of Maritime Blockade: Past, Present, and Future, https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-law-of-maritime-blockade-9780198808435

Music: Sam Barsh, Oils of Au Lait

43. Emergency cast: Israel's blockade of Gaza

A podcast of informal conversation about topical issues in international law, life in academia and whatever else is on our mind. Hosted by Douglas Guilfoyle and featuring Juliette McIntyre, Tamsin Paige, Imogen Saunders, Nitna Tzouvala. 

Music: Sam Barsh, Oils of Au Lait

32 Group Therapy: So Long and Thanks for all the International Law

Called to the Bar - International Law over Drinks

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