There are refugees, there are migrants and then there are the millions of people who live in legal limbo because they defy easy categorisation. But everyone is just looking for a place to call home.
The case provided a platform to lay bare the ugly reality of conditions in detention, and the role of the Commonwealth and its contractors in producing and sustaining those conditions over many years.
The recent American airstrike in Syria has created a new norm in international law sanctioning the unilateral use of force to punish those who deploy chemical weapons against their own people.
The usual procedures for extradition between countries with substantial and complex bilateral relations – like those that Australia and China have – will now not be available.
An adversarial international commission of inquiry, similar to one instituted to resolve a dispute between Britain and Russia in 1905, could break the deadlock over the downed flight.
Japan claims that the placement of “comfort girl” statues outside the Japanese legations in South Korea violates international law, but state practice and jurisprudence suggests otherwise.
Plenty of African states bristle at the rest of the world’s eagerness to prosecute crimes committed on the continent. Some are finding other ways to do it.