Michael Bohlander
Holder of the Chair in Global Law and SETI Policy at Durham University (UK) and a career international criminal-law jurist. Bohlander has served as International Co-Investigating Judge in the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia since 2015 and was an international judge of the Kosovo Specialist Chambers (2017–2022); he was a life-tenured member of the German judiciary from 1991 before joining Durham in 2004. Since 2020 his primary research focus has been the consequences of contact with extraterrestrial intelligence for human law and society.
Contact ethics / international criminal law thesis
At the July 2026 “Breaking the Taboo” symposium — which he co-organized — Bohlander argues that the use of force commonly described in abduction/contact narratives, by overriding human autonomy, constitutes violence by the alien intelligence that “can rise in severity to the level of … core crimes under international criminal law.” This applies a jurist’s legal-standard framework to experiencer testimony and complements Karin Austin’s argument for case-by-case witness-credibility assessment.
Vault appearances
- src-breaking-the-taboo-uap-contact-symposium-2026-05 — co-organizer; Session 3 talk on the ethics of contact and use of force.