Panel Discussion: Silicon Valley and the End-times: The Law, Politics and Economy of Apocalypse

Panel Discussion: Silicon Valley and the End-times: The Law, Politics and Economy of Apocalypse

Please join Professor Melinda Cooper (Australian National University), Dr Richard Joyce (Melbourne Law School), Dr Adil Hasan Khan (Melbourne Law School) and Professor James Martel (San Francisco State University) as they discuss Silicon Valley billionaires and apocalyptic thinking. This discussion was chaired by Dr André Dao (Melbourne Law School). The current concentration of financial, technological, military and political power in the billionaires of Silicon Valley is unprecedented. US government support, both in terms of policy and contracts, is essential to the sector. Relatedly, technology billionaires have become key actors within the Trump administration (most famously, if relatively briefly, Elon Musk as head of ‘DOGE’, and Marc Andreesen as a key advisor to the President). The current controversy over Anthropic’s attempt to impose terms of use on the US Government concerning domestic surveillance and autonomous weapons, and its designation as a ‘supply chain risk’, demonstrates how much power is concentrated in these corporations – and the significance of their relationship to the state. Meanwhile, many of these billionaires appear to hold views that would have once been described as extreme and certainly niche, if not outright weird. Palantir founder (and US Vice-President J.D. Vance’s key benefactor) Peter Thiel, has a long-standing obsession with end-times and the Antichrist (and related fear of world government) which led him most recently to embark on four lecture series on the topic in San Francisco, with a follow-up in Rome. More broadly, right-wing accelerationism, and its rejection of humanism (and, in some more extreme forms, humans), has provided a ground for technology billionaires to explore the possibilities of a technology-enabled future freed from democracy and social obligation. There appears to be a dangerous feedback loop between the conditions being exacerbated by technology’s mobilisation of capital and power (environmental and geopolitical catastrophe), and the relevance and explanatory force of apocalyptic thinking. At the same time, political leaders explicitly ascribe eschatological meaning to their military actions, in part to deny the relevance of international legal constraints. In this episode, the panel considered the impact of apocalyptic thinking on the way technology billionaires amass and exert power, and the way the current moment and our futures are being shaped by their end-times fantasies. This event formed part of the Laureate Research Program in Global Corporations and International Law, and the Discovery Project ‘International Law and the Challenge of Populism’, both funded by the Australian Research Council. We are also grateful for the support of the Institute for International Law and the Humanities, Melbourne Law School.

Tanzil Chowdhury: The British Constitution, Capitalism and Constitutional Change

In this episode, Associate Professor Tanzil Chowdhury (Queen Mary University of London) discusses his latest book project, examining the transformation of the British Constitution over the last century. Tanzil’s argument is that we cannot understand significant changes to the British constitution without understanding the broader historical developments in capitalist social relations and the significant social antagonisms that have occurred throughout the last 100 or so years. Capitalism is a totality of different social relations and processes oriented around the value form; different social relations (economic, but also political, legal, cultural, moral etc) which are all important to the reproduction of that social totality. Contrary to heteronomous theories of constitutional change (including some Marxist ones), this project seeks to understand constitutions (the different institutional combinations of state and social power, subject formations, forms of mediation and characterisations of legality) as having an internal relation with capitalist social relations. In that sense, constitutions cannot be abstracted from capitalist social relations and are in fact, as Tanzil argues, historically specific to capitalism. However, even though constitutions are internally related to capitalist social relations, that does not mean that capitalist societies are not fraught with all manner of tensions, contradictions and ruptures. This is not therefore a rigid economistic and deterministic theory of constitutional development, but one which takes seriously the historical distinctness of the legal form, constitutionalism, and the specific work they do (or not) in the reproduction of capitalist social relations. Constitutionalism operates at different levels within the contradictory totality of capitalist social relations. Changes to the British constitution are the results of specific forms of struggle over the reproduction of capitalist social relations. Tanzil sets out some examples of this theoretical approach, periodises the last century of the British constitution, and connects it to distinct historical forms of capitalist constitutionalism. This seminar was chaired by Dr Martin Clark.

Panel Discussion: Beyond Doctrine: Alternative and Critical Approaches to Law (Book Launch)

The Institute for International Law and the Humanities (IILAH) in collaboration with the Melbourne Doctoral Forum on Legal Theory (MDFLT/Forum) were pleased to host a launch of 'Beyond Doctrine: Alternative and Critical Approaches to Law' at Melbourne Law School. 'Beyond Doctrine' provides an authoritative and thoughtful introduction to different legal methodologies and situates those methodologies in an Australian context. Edited by Harry Hobbs and Jeremy Patrick, it includes contributions from an impressive array of Australian scholars covering theories that ask us to think more deeply about law and what it means. On the evening of 24 November 2025, Earn Asanasak was joined by chapter authors Professor Heather Douglas, Professor Ann Genovese, Dr Claerwen O’Hara and Dr Alice Palmer to discuss their contributions to 'Beyond Doctrine' and insights into the collaborative venture of an edited volume on legal theory. Speakers in order of appearance: Dr Alice Palmer, Earn Asanasak, Dr Claerwen O'Hara, Professor Ann Genovese and Professor Heather Douglas. This event happened in parallel with the launch of 'Beyond Doctrine' in Sydney at the UNSW Legal Education Research Conference also in November 2025.

Ellycia Harrould-Kolieb & Karen Scott: The 2025 United Nations Oceans Conference

In this episode, Dr Ellycia Harrould-Kolieb (Faculty of Science, University of Melbourne) Professor Karen N Scott (University of Canterbury) and Professor Margaret Young (Melbourne Law School) shared reflections on their experiences at the 2025 United Nations Oceans Conference (UNOC3). The United Nations Oceans Conference in Nice, France, was a five day event in June involving more than 60 heads of states and governments and over 15,000 participants. Its published outcome, the ‘Nice Ocean Action Plan’ comprises a political declaration (A/CONF.230/2025/L.1) and voluntary commitments which seek to address the grave state of ocean health. Calls to expand marine protection, curb pollution, regulate the high seas, and unlock financing for vulnerable coastal and island nations were advanced in this third summit, dubbed UNOC3, which followed previous conferences in New York (2017) and Lisbon (2022). Alongside the ‘blue zone’ of government delegations and the ‘green zone’ of civil society engagement were side-events in universities and other organisations. The three speakers of this episode – academics in Australia and New Zealand – attended UNOC3 in various research capacities and present their reflections and critical perspectives. This event was organised by the Institute for International Law and the Humanities (IILAH), Melbourne Climate Futures (MCF), the International Law Association (Australian branch) and the Oceans and International Environmental Law Interest Group (OIELG) of the Australian and New Zealand Society of International Law (ANZSIL).

Panel Discussion: The ICJ's Climate Advisory Opinion

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) delivered its long-awaited Advisory Opinion on the obligations of States in respect of climate change on 23 July 2025. In this episode, Melbourne Law School experts Dylan Asafo, Rohan Nanthakumar, Professor Jackie Peel and Professor Margaret Young discussed the ICJ’s Advisory Opinion and its implications for international law. The ICJ is expected to provide legal clarity on two questions: (a) the obligations of States under international law to ensure the protection of the climate system from greenhouse gas emissions, for States and for present and future generations; and (b) the legal consequences of these obligations for the States that have caused significant harm to the climate system, especially with respect to (i) injured or particularly vulnerable States such as small island developing states; and (ii) current and future generations. This event was co-hosted by IILAH, the Melbourne Centre for Law and the Environment (MCLE), Melbourne Climate Futures (MCF), the Laureate Program on Global Corporate Climate Accountability and the Oceans and International Environmental Law Interest Group (OIELG) of the Australian and New Zealand Society of International Law (ANZSIL).