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Overview

Professor Michael Bohlander

Chair in Global Law and SETI Policy


Affiliations
Affiliation
Chair in Global Law and SETI Policy in the Durham Law School

Biography

Practitioner experience

Professor Bohlander is the International Co-Investigating Judge in the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC). After the nomination by the UN Secretary-General and his appointment by the King of Cambodia, he was on leave from Durham University and served as a full-time judge at the court in Phnom Penh from 2015 until 2019. In April 2020 he was re-instated by the UN Secretary-General to deal with unexpected residual litigation and has since held the post. From 2017 until 2022, he was also on the roster of international judges at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague, during which time he sat on the first case to come before the Supreme Court Chamber.

He joined Durham University in 2004, having previously been a judge on civil and criminal pre-trial, trial and appellate dockets in the courts of the newly established Free State of Thuringia since 1991, after German unification. Apart from his regular civil and serious crime docket, he tried cases involving regime crime, the cassation of convictions by the courts of the former German Democratic Republic, the judicial rehabilitation of persons convicted for political reasons, and the restitution of property confiscated by the regime to the rightful owners. 

He helped train the judges of the Iraqi High Tribunal which tried Saddam Hussein and was active in judicial training and advising a number of governments (Cambodia, Egypt, Georgia, Kosovo, Kurdistan/Iraq, Tunisia).

Previous research

Professor Bohlander has published over 20 books, more than 160 chapters and articles, and over 60 book reviews. His work has been cited over 85 times by and before courts and authorities across the world. His prior research spanned German law, English and Welsh criminal law, comparative and international criminal law, the judiciary and the legal profession, and Islamic law.

In 2012, he was the first non-Muslim visiting scholar ever to teach at the Faculty of Law of Al-Azhar University in Cairo. From 2010 - 2014, he held the Visiting Chair in Criminal Law at the Centre for Law and Global Governance of the  Rijksuniversiteit Groningen in the Netherlands.

Contact with Extraterrestrial Intelligence and Human Law

His current main focus is on the relationship between the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) as well as the scientific debate about Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP), and human law in the wider sense, including issues such as the implications of the possibility of hostile first contact for the human laws of armed conflict, on the peaceful use of outer space, or the question of which global values - such as, for example, international human rights standards - humanity would be willing to compromise for access to advanced technology that would, for example, help solve Earth's climate and energy crises etc., from an extraterrestrial civilisation in the event of a peaceful first contact. 

His 2023 monograph "Contact with Extraterrestrial Intelligence and Human Law - The applicability of rules of war and human rights" has already received  a broad positive response in popular science and academic environments (see here, here, here, here, here, here and here).  He was invited to speak about SETI and International Law at the National University of Singapore in March 2024, and his book was discussed by Professor Steve Fuller and Dr Michael Uhall at the April 2024 Colloquium of the Society of UAP Studies.

He also has an interest in the evaluation of evidence about alleged encounters with UAP in judicial proceedings and is the editor of a special volume of Limina - The Journal of UAP Studies on the topic (tbp 2026).

Together with John Elliott and Andreas Anton he is working on an edited book with the title "Human Life after Contact with Extraterrestrial Civilisations" (tbp 2026 with Routledge).

He is a member of the Board of Advisors of the Society for UAP Studies, and the convenor of a new three-year working group "SETI and Law" under the auspices of the International Institute of Space Law.

 

Research interests

  • Legal aspects of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI)
  • International and comparative criminal law - Theory, practice, political and socio-legal implications

Publications

Authored book

Book review

Chapter in book

Conference Paper

Edited book

Journal Article

Manual

Other (Print)

Presentation

Scholarly Edition

Supervision students