At a time when international justice faces growing challenges, Professor Darryl Robinson is helping make global debates accessible to a general audience. He is the primary host and a co-producer of a new podcast, The Unwritten Journal, created by the team behind the Journal of International Criminal Justice.

“The Unwritten Journal gives a 360-degree perspective on international criminal law developments, including both critical and optimistic perspectives,” he says.

“International criminal law raises many fascinating issues: how hard it is for law to address power, the fragility and value of international order, the clash of different important interests, different approaches to mass atrocity, reconciling different legal traditions.”

Robinson and his co-hosts explore one issue each month in a short 30-minute episode, with guests who are scholars and advocates in the field.

The first episode, airing today, examines the U.S. campaign to dismantle the International Criminal Court. “It is a very timely issue of broad interest,” he says. “It puts in stark terms the clash between a rule of law system, which applies established rules consistently, versus one where powerful states do whatever they want.”

One guest on the inaugural episode is Judge Kimberly Prost, a former instructor in Queen’s International Law Program, who has been subject to U.S. sanctions arising from her work as an international judge.

Future episodes will discuss the many cases underway in numerous countries, the diverse critiques of international criminal justice, and controversies around peace talks and arrest warrants.

Robinson co-produces and co-hosts the podcast with Kalika Mehta, a postdoctoral researcher at Humboldt University of Berlin; Ana Srovin Coralli, a postdoctoral researcher affiliated with the University of St. Gallen and the Geneva Graduate Institute’s Global Governance Centre; and Professor Antonio Coco of the University of Essex.

How did the team come up with the podcast title? “The Unwritten Journal unpacks issues like a journal, but it is comprised of conversations,” says Robinson. “Also, sometimes we are exploring new ideas that are not yet written, and we are talking about a field whose trajectory is not yet written.”

The team aims to make complex issues accessible through short, focused episodes that provide listeners with a quick introduction to important developments in the field.

“International criminal law is attacked by both the left and the right, based on opposite claims, because it either defers too much to the powerful or because it dares to examine the powerful,” Robinson says. “Whatever the controversies, the core idea is that mass murder should not go unaddressed.”

The Unwritten Journal is available on Apple, Spotify, and other podcast platforms.