Here are my latest posts…
Invited Speaker at the 2026 ASIL Annual Meeting: BBNJ Implementation Architecture
Pleased to share that I have been invited to speak at the 2026 ASIL Annual Meeting in Washington, DC (22–25 April) on the panel “From Treaty Text to Practice: Establishing the BBNJ Implementation Architecture.” The BBNJ Agreement entered into force in January 2026. The question now is how its provisions will be operationalised — particularly…
New Publication: Intellectual Property and Benefit-Sharing Under the BBNJ Agreement
As discussions advance towards the BBNJ PrepCom, Júlia Schütz Veiga and I are pleased to share our latest article, published in Frontiers in Marine Science: “Between technological innovation and the ocean commons: intellectual property and benefit-sharing under the BBNJ Agreement.” In this article, we engage with a question that sits at the core of current…
Views on Latin America – Tilburg University (March 2026)
Grateful for the invitation to join the “Views on Latin America” panel at Tilburg University earlier this month, organised by TiMUN Society and Studium Generale. Two topics, one afternoon: first, the intersections of environmental governance and indigenous rights; then, the challenges of regional integration in an age of new technologies. We covered a lot of…
Knowledge Flows. Bodies Don’t: The Berghain Problem in International Law
‘Knowledge flows. Bodies don’t.’ This thought has stayed with me after co-authoring a recent piece for Stanford University’s CodeX, The Stanford Center for Legal Informatics with Julia Schutz Veiga and Tony Lai on how international environmental law often treats Indigenous knowledge as a commodity while keeping Indigenous Peoples outside the rooms where decisions are made.…
Presenting at the NWO Future-Proof Regulation Symposium (November 2025)
Earlier this week, Rohan Nanda, Julia Schutz Veiga and I presented our joint work ‘Mapping the Unseen: Strengthening Citizen Oversight of Marine Genetic Resources through Artificial Intelligence’ at the NWO (Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek) Future-Proof Regulation Symposium and Practitioner Day (17–18 November 2025). The meeting focused on a central question for regulators across Europe:…
DOSI Policy Brief on Implementing the BBNJ Agreement’s Regime for Marine Genetic Resources
Proud to share the new Deep-Ocean Stewardship Initiative (DOSI) Policy Brief on implementing the BBNJ Agreement’s regime for marine genetic resources, released as we approach the Agreement’s entry into force in January 2026. This Brief brings together researchers and practitioners to offer clear, practical recommendations on how institutions can work together more effectively in this…
Marine Genetic Resources as a Test Case for Earth System Law (November, 2025)
On 12 November 2025, I participated in the First International Symposium on Earth System Law, held at Wageningen University and Research, followed by an Author Workshop on 13 November at Utrecht University. Together with Rohan Nanda and Julia Schutz Veiga, I presented on “Marine Genetic Resources as a Test Case for Earth System Law.” Our…
The Logic(s) of International Law
My latest publication for 2025 is out. Together with Antonia Waltermann, we co-edited a Special Issue of the Hague Yearbook of International Law on The Logic(s) of International Law. The motivating question for this Special Issue is simple, but the answers are not: what role does logic play in international law? And is there a…
Weaponising International Environmental Law: Presenting at Utrecht University (November 2025)
On 13–14 November 2025, I presented the paper “Weaponising International Environmental Law: Articulations of Hegemonic Practice in Deep Seabed Mining” at the Sixth Workshop on Sociological Inquiries into International Law in a Polarized World: Markets, National Security, and Democracy, held at the Johanna Hudig Gebouw, Utrecht University School of Law. The paper examines how “environmental…
Speaking at ‘Law and Digital Distraction’ (Maastricht, October 2025)
Yesterday (October 2nd), I had the privilege of speaking at “Law and Digital Distraction”, a timely event organised by Konrad Kollnig (Maastricht University) exploring how social media and digital platforms reshape attention, accountability, and legal regulation. The event brought together excellent perspectives. Ulrik Lyngs from Oxford presented the Reduce Digital Distraction Project, examining how we…
The “Legal Rule Tagger” Teaching Tool
I’m happy to share my new interactive teaching tool, the Legal Rule Tagger. Available here: https://henriquejbmarcos.github.io/legal-rule-tagger/ This tool is designed for law students and instructors. It helps users tag and visualise the logical structure of legal rules — particularly the relationships between consequences, cumulative conditions, and alternative conditions. How it works Because it’s browser-based with…
Technology in its Villain Era – Gikii 2025
On 11-12 September, I joined the Gikii 2025, “Technology in its Villain Era”, at the Institution of Information Law (IViR) at Universiteit van Amsterdam. Special thanks to the wonderful organisers, Anh Nguyen, Bengi Zeybek, Anushka Mittal, for the space to present my work and for the invitation to join the programme committee. My presentation, “Moby…
BBNJ Cambridge Blogpost shared by DOSI
I’m happy to share that the text I published with Julia Schutz Veiga in the Cambridge International Law Journal (CILJ) was featured in the Deep-Ocean Stewardship Initiative (DOSI) ‘s September 2025 newsletter! Our piece addresses a critical gap in the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ) Agreement: how to turn Article 14’s benefit-sharing commitments into practice.…
Participation in the United Nations Ocean Conference (UNOC3, Nice)
From 8–13 June 2025, I had the opportunity to attend the Third United Nations Ocean Conference (UNOC3) in Nice, France, as part of the Maastricht-São Paulo delegation. I participated as a scientific delegate (not representing the interests of any nation), affiliated as a Lecturer at Maastricht University Faculty of Law and a Researcher at CEDMAR…
Open Access Publication with the German Yearbook of Int’l Law
Escher’s Waterfall is unsettling to me. A perpetual cascade of water whose origin and end are indistinguishable. Water forever falling and returning, causality suspended in an optical illusion. This impossible structure haunted me as I wrote my article “Causal Loops, Ontological Crises, and Customary International Law”, now published in the German Yearbook of International Law.…
Article Publication in the International Community Law Review (Open Access)
My latest article, ‘Lex Specialis as a Reason-Giving Norm: Balancing Norm Specificity and Individual Rights in Times of Crisis’, is now available in International Community Law Review (Vol. 27, 2025). At the heart of this piece is a computational reasoning framework that reinterprets lex specialis—not as a rigid trump card, but as a defeasible, reason-giving…
Dutch National Ocean Science Conference (NOSC, 2025)
Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending the National Ocean Science Conference, organised by the NIOZ Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, the Sustainable Ocean Community, and Universiteit Utrecht. Alongside my colleague Rohan Nanda, I was honoured to present our research on MGRs—co-authored with the brilliant Julia Schutz Veiga who unfortunately could not attend—and contribute…
I’m an Accredited Scientific Delegate at UNOC3 (Nice, June 2025)
I’m honoured to share that I’ve been officially confirmed as an accredited scientific delegate to the 2025 United Nations Ocean Conference, from 9–13 June in Nice, France. The UN Ocean Conference is a high-level diplomatic event, co-hosted by France and Costa Rica, aimed at accelerating action to implement Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 14: the conservation…
Guest Speaker at the European Law Students’ Association (Maastricht, 2025)
I recently had the opportunity to speak at the opening of the annual event organised by the ELSA / ELSA Maastricht Alumni Network at Maastricht University Faculty of Law, where we discussed the paths, challenges, and possibilities of building an academic career in Europe. What made this invitation truly special is that it came from…
Featured Article on Opinio Juris: ‘The US–China Mirror’
New Featured Article on Opinio Juris: The US–China Mirror: TikTok, National Security, and Techno-Nationalism. Drawing on insights from the February 2025 event ‘Whatever Happened to TikTok?’ at Maastricht University Faculty of Law, I discuss the recent US ban (and unbanning) of TikTok to explore how techno-nationalism is shaping geopolitics and global law. In this piece,…
LTH Special Journal Issue Published!
Part A of the special journal issue “Narratives, Frontier Technologies, and the Law” has been published in Law, Technology and Humans (Vol. 7 No. 1, 2025)! This publication brings together research developed during the Narratives, Frontier Technologies & the Law (NFT-L) Conference, held at Maastricht University Faculty of Law on 30–31 October and 1 November…
Visiting Period at Lund University
I want to express my deep appreciation to the Faculty of Law of Lund University for the kind welcome and support during my recent visit earlier this year. While at Lund, I focused on legal reasoning in marine environmental policy, especially examining the structure of decision-making processes and how we can enhance our understanding of…
Sensemaking Worshop: AI, Regulatory Compliance, and Marine Environmental Policy
Alongside my colleague Rohan Nanda (Institute of Data Science, Maastricht University), we published a short blogpost on the sensemaking workshop we held on March 28th at Maastricht University Faculty of Law. Our goal was simple but ambitious: to foster honest dialogue across disciplines on how AI can (or cannot) support compliance with marine environmental regulation.…
Capacity-Building Course for Young Law of the Sea Researchers
On the 29th of March, I had the opportunity to teach a session on legal research methods for the capacity-building course organised by the Center for Studies on the Law of the Sea at the University of São Paulo (CEDMAR/USP). It was a privilege to contribute to this initiative, and I am grateful to CEDMAR,…
New Publication, ‘Tech Won’t Save Us,’ in LTH Journal
A colleague recently told me that they weren’t particularly concerned about climate change. After all, they had purchased an electric vehicle, invested in green funds, and installed solar panels on their roof. It was a familiar conversation—one that, I suspect, many of us have internally, often without realising it, as part of an uncritical assumption…
ELS Funding Approved!
I am thrilled to share that our project “Artificial Intelligence and Marine Environmental Policy: What Role for Automated Systems?” will be funded by the Netherlands Empirical Legal Studies Academy. This project has been a long-standing collaboration between Rohan Nanda and me, and we are now delighted to have the involvement of several colleagues, including external…
Invited Speaker on US-China Social Media Geopolitics (i.e., Whatever Happened to TikToK!?)
The colleagues of the Law & Popular Culture Network (Livia Solaro, Eline Couperus, Agustin Parise, and Arthur Willemse) at Maastricht University Faculty of Law have invited me to speak at their event “Whatever Happened to TikTok?” This event aims to bring together researchers to discuss the reasons and implications of the recent legal developments around TikTok, particularly its recent ban in the…
Towards a New Environmental Law of the Sea? (TEGL Conference, 2024)
A quick throwback to the ‘Transformative Effects of Globalization and Law’ Conference, which took place on 16 December 2024 at Maastricht University Faculty of Law. I had the pleasure of organising and chairing the panel ‘Towards a New Environmental Law of the Sea? Navigating Legal Uncertainties in Warming Oceans’. My presentation focused on my ongoing…
Multinaturalism, Climate Change, Human Rights
Last Friday (Dec 13th, 2024) at the University of Hasselt, we had the pleasure of presenting some remarks on the epistemic and anthropological complexities of climate change litigation. Focusing on Viveiros de Castro’s notions of ‘multinaturalism’ and ‘perspectivism’, André Nunes Chaib and I presented our work at the ‘Enhancing Compliance with Human Rights from Below…
Waves of Change: Nurturing Ocean Resilience & Chartering Sustainable Futures (The Maldives)
Last December 10th, I had the pleasure of presenting my ongoing research on the technical panel at the ‘Waves of Change: Nurturing Ocean Resilience & Chartering Sustainable Futures’ Conference at the Villa College, FSL, The Maldives. In my paper, I examine the 2024 ITLOS Advisory Opinion on Climate Change to show how the tribunal has…
Henrique Marcos 