The world is failing women and girls. With just five years left to accomplish the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), not a single country is on track to meet SDG 5: achieving gender equality. Governments cite excuses such as budget constraints or political instability, but a leading cause is the injustice that remains embedded [...]

“History is an illustrious war against death.” Jose Ortega y Gasset, Man and Crisis (1958) Policy Contexts and Legal Obligations Even after defeating Iran-backed Hamas and Hezbollah on tangible fields of battle, Israel has ample reason to stay vigilant against jihadi terrorism. In essence, Israel’s recent tactical successes have been partial and transient. This is [...]

Demographic decline, once dismissed as a niche obsession of “pronatalists” on the right, has increasingly gained mainstream media and scholarly attention in the United States. In this way the US is somewhat behind the curve; falling birthrates have long obsessed policymakers abroad, particularly in East Asia and Europe. Nevertheless, in popular US discourse, demographic decline [...]

Thinking about writing a legal commentary on the threats to naturalized and birthright citizens in the United States, it unexpectedly occurred to me to question Grok, the large language model (LLM) Elon Musk developed after the success of ChatGPT. Having taught law for decades using the Socratic method, I was curious how Grok would handle [...]

On the morning of June 13, 2025, the city of Tehran was rocked by deafening explosions. An unexpected Israeli military operation began, targeting nuclear and military facilities throughout Iran. Israel asserted that its actions were justified under the principle of ‘anticipatory self-defense,’ a concept that is narrowly defined in international law. However, the aftermath of [...]

The international order today is no longer shaped by classical geopolitics defined by territorial boundaries, military alliances, and traditional warfare. Instead, global power is increasingly exercised through what can be described as networked geopolitics. In this emerging paradigm, influence flows across interconnected systems of information, infrastructure, ideology, finance, and digital communication. Power now resides in [...]

Rising authoritarianism, armed conflicts, and technological upheaval are eroding the foundations of international law. One state, with no army, no economic might, and physically smaller than many college campuses, continues to exert global influence through the quiet power of moral authority and legal advocacy. The Vatican, long underestimated as a relic of medieval diplomacy, arguably [...]

“Credo quia absurdum”—”I believe because it is absurd.”—Tertullian, early Christian theologian It’s conspicuous. Despite impressive technological advances, the United States remains a proud bastion of anti-reason. Though approval numbers trend downward, President Donald J. Trump remains widely-admired for “courage,” “caring” and “common sense.” In some quarters, Trump is seriously considered a divine rescuer, a deliverer [...]

Introduction In the spring of 2020, Kingfish Maine (KM) and the Maine Department of Environmental Protection (MDEP) began collaborating on a proposed $110 million onshore fish farm in Jonesport, a small fishing town in Maine. The path to MDEP approval has been convoluted and opaque, ultimately resulting in the green light for an international corporate [...]

On March 25, Trinidad and Tobago’s Court of Appeal overturned a High Court ruling that the country’s colonial-era “Buggery and Serious Indecency laws” are unconstitutional. The decision brought worldwide scrutiny and criticisms about backsliding human rights and what many rights groups deem the “re-criminalization of homosexuality.” The Court of Appeal’s reasoning in the decision is [...]