500 episodes listed below
One lawyer, one question, one full argument.
Each episode is a single lecture on a defined question of international law, delivered by a barrister, professor, rapporteur, or commission member who has worked on it directly. Topics range from state responsibility for aiding another state's wrongful act to the annulment of investment arbitration awards and the High Seas Treaty.
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Five hundred episodes in, the format has not changed: one speaker, one subject, one sustained explanation. Speakers introduce themselves by name and standing, then get to work. There is no interviewer, no cold-open teaser, no music bed to fill the pauses. Michael Wood, a barrister in London working mainly in public international law, devotes a lecture to Article 16 of the Articles on State Responsibility. He is careful about vocabulary. Complicity, he notes, is a criminal-law term the Commission deliberately avoided during second reading, and he cites James Crawford on why domestic analogies rarely help. He closes by naming the hard cases: shared intelligence, provided weapons, military assets, transferred detainees. Elisa Morgera, UN Special Rapporteur on Climate Change and Human Rights, traces how international environmental law and international human rights law developed on parallel tracks and have since converged, extending into the law of the sea and climate change law. Her assessment of treaty implementation is blunt. Open-ended obligations have allowed states to under-deliver, and decades of lawmaking have left biodiversity loss, climate breakdown, and toxic pollution unresolved and tangled up with economic inequality. Penelope Ridings, a member of the International Law Commission and former Chief International Legal Advisor from New Zealand, appears twice. One lecture covers ICSID annulment procedure, the grounds under Article 52, the private deliberations of ad hoc committees, the 120-day deadline, and her conclusion that the mechanism is a limited safeguard balancing finality against fairness. The other breaks the WTO's Multi-Party Interim Appeal Arbitration Arrangement into its name, word by word, to explain what it is and what it is not. Cymie Payne, a professor at Rutgers University and chair of the IUCN World Commission on Environmental Law's Ocean Law Specialist Group, took part in negotiating the BBNJ Agreement and reviews its impact-assessment and technology-transfer provisions. She ends on the treaty as evidence that multilateralism still functions. Gina Romero lectures in Spanish on the rights to peaceful assembly and association, listing the protected forms, from marches and vigils to flash mobs and single-person protests, and holding that freedom is the rule and restriction the narrow exception. The register throughout is measured and technical. Arguments build by enumeration and comparison rather than emphasis. Transcripts and related materials are noted as available through the Library's site, which suits anyone who wants to follow the citations afterward.
Made for: Law students, practitioners, diplomats, and researchers who want authoritative instruction on treaty law, dispute settlement, and human rights without a textbook. It also suits anyone comfortable following a technical argument end to end.
What sets it apart: The speakers are not commentators on these instruments but people who negotiated, arbitrated, or advised on them, and they say so at the outset. Lectures are free, run in multiple languages, and come with transcripts and cited source materials.
The United Nations Audiovisual Library of International Law is a unique multimedia resource providing high quality international law training and research materials for free. Please visit our website at http://legal.un.org/avl/
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Specialist lectures make international law concrete through careful accounts of state responsibility, treaty procedure, environmental duties, and protected civic freedoms.
Audiovisual Library of International Law turns international law into focused lectures on how states acquire obligations, exercise authority, and answer for their conduct. Speakers establish the governing framework before working through its limits and practical operation.
Article 16 gives "just helping" a legal problem, if you're ready for the fine print.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Article 16 is presented as a rule on deliberate support, with the assisting state responsible for its own act and the acting state still primarily responsible.
Michael Wood presents Article 16 of the 2001 Articles on State Responsibility as a central rule on aid or assistance by one state in the commission of an internationally wrongful act by another.
A careful legal guide to how human-rights standards can sharpen environmental obligations.
Human rights and environmental law are treated here as once-separate fields that now increasingly meet around state obligations. Elisa Morgera, the UN Special Rapporteur on Climate Change and Human Rights, follows that shift from the 1972 Stockholm Declaration through the use of…
A disciplined doctrinal tour of annulment that keeps finality, fairness, and Article 52 in view.
Penelope Ridings gives a disciplined account of EXIT annulment, treating it as a distinct feature of the system and placing it within investor-state arbitration.
Simi Payne traces how the BBNJ Agreement moves from UNCLOS principles toward practical institutions for high-seas protection.
The BBNJ Agreement is framed here as a test of how international law turns shared ocean principles into working institutions. Simi Payne, a Rutgers University professor and chair of the Ocean Law Specialist Group of the International Union for Conservation of Nature World…
A clear account of the legal rules protecting peaceful assembly and association.
Gina Romero outlines the legal frame for peaceful assembly and association with steady clarity, showing how the rights are codified, how far they extend, and how tightly any restriction should be kept.
A disciplined survey of liability, redress, and compliance, with rare treaty practice at the center.
Edith Brown-Weiss lays out liability, accountability, and compliance in international environmental law with steady focus, beginning with state responsibility and the remedies that follow an internationally wrongful act.
A dense but clear tour of WTO exceptions that turns necessity into a workable test.
The episode frames WTO exceptions as the point where public regulation and trade law meet. The professor lays out the meaning of exceptions, then moves through their rationale, structure, and case law.
Small things, real markets, strange incentives.
Markets, money, and Germany in motion.
Professor Edith Brown-Weiss delivers a lecture on liability, accountability, and compliance in international environmental law.
Columbia Law School professor Petros Mavroidis delivers a 35-minute lecture on exception clauses in WTO law.
Thibaut Fleury-Graff, professor at Paris-Panthéon-Assas, distinguishes obligations that prescribe or prohibit conduct, such as Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, from competences that grant a state power over people, goods and activities.
Michael Wood takes up Article 16.
This lecture by UN Special Rapporteur Elisa Morgera explores the integration of human rights and environmental law, tracing their parallel evolution and highlighting three key pathways toward recognizing a right to a healthy environment.
Penelope Ridings opens by laying out her professional background: she is a member of the International Law Commission, a former Chief International Legal Advisor from New Zealand, and a former member and chair of EXIT annulment committees.
Professor Cymie Payne discusses the BBNJ Agreement, a UN treaty for conserving marine biodiversity in international waters, covering its history, provisions, and implementation.
Penelope Ridings explains the WTO's Multi-Party Interim Appeal Arbitration Arrangement (MPIA), an interim appeal mechanism adopted by WTO members to maintain two-tiered dispute settlement while the appellate body is non-functional.
Gina Romero opens with a legal frame.
This episode explores the definition of prohibited intervention in international law, focusing on the two key conditions: it must concern fundamentally internal matters and be coercive.
This episode analyzes the 2012 Greek sovereign debt restructuring, contrasting it with Argentina's approach and examining the role of holdout creditors and vulture funds in blocking negotiations under international law.
Mario Oyarzábal, un experto legal de la ONU y Argentina, presenta una ponencia sobre los problemas legales internacionales de la reestructuración de la deuda soberana, enfocándose en casos como Argentina y Grecia, y los principios de la ONU de 2015.
This lecture examines the legal challenges of sovereign debt restructuring under international law, focusing on Argentina's case study, UN principles, and broader implications.
This episode examines sovereign debt restructuring through the contrasting cases of Greece and Argentina, focusing on Greece's 2012 restructuring, the role of holdout creditors and voucher funds, and legal challenges with bonds issued under foreign law.