Dr Graham Melling

Assistant Professor

School: Northumbria School of Law

Dr Graham Melling is Senior Lecturer in Law at Northumbria Law School, Northumbria University, where he also serves as MLaw Director of Studies. He holds a PhD in Public International Law from the University of Reading, awarded without corrections, and an LLM in International and Commercial Law from the University of Sheffield.

Prior to joining Northumbria in 2020, Graham was Senior Lecturer in Law and Director of Postgraduate Taught Programmes at Lincoln Law School, University of Lincoln, where he directed the Law in a Global Context research group and organised the school's research seminar series. Earlier positions include Lecturer in Law at the University of Buckingham, and teaching roles at the Universities of Leicester and Reading, King's College London, and De Montfort University. He has held a Visiting Professorship at South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, China, and has served as Visiting Lecturer at the Open University of Tanzania. He has acted as subject expert PhD supervisor at King's College London, external examiner at the University of Sheffield, and external programme reviewer at the Universities of Dundee and London South Bank.

Graham’s research has appeared in the Journal of Conflict and Security Law, the Journal on the Use of Force and International Law, the Nordic Journal of International Law, the International and Comparative Law Review, and the Indian Journal of International Law, among others. Graham is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a Member of the International Law Association.

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Research Themes and Scholarly Interests

Graham Melling is a public international lawyer whose research focuses on the law governing the use of force and the relationship between international law and international politics. His work examines not only how the primary rules of international law develop and change under the pressure of political practice, but the processes — institutional, political, and normative — through which that development occurs.

His current research programme encompasses two connected projects. The first, Confronting the Radical Disorder of the Rules-Based Order: What Role for International Law?, developed in collaboration with Dr Kenneth Chan of the Walther Schücking Institute at the University of Kiel, Germany, interrogates the 'rules-based order' (RBO) as a political framework promoted by Western liberal states and examines its complex and contested relationship with international law. The project maps the constellation of states engaging with the RBO — from its ideological core to states in active opposition — and assesses whether the RBO functions as a complement to international law, a vehicle for its development, or a framework that progressively displaces it as the central organising principle of the global system.

The second project, Defending the Freedom of Navigation: The Legal Basis and Its Limits, examines the basis on which states claim a right to use force to defend freedom of navigation beyond their own vessels. With particular focus on US and coalition operations in the Red Sea and the Strait of Hormuz, the research traces a spectrum of legal justifications — from flag state protection and collective self-defence to entirely unrequested third-party action — and assesses whether the legal bases invoked by states are coherent against the framework of the UN Charter, UNCLOS, and the law of state responsibility.

Alongside these current projects, Graham has published on the prohibition on the use of force under Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, the doctrine of humanitarian intervention, the Responsibility to Protect, the role of the UN Security Council and General Assembly in responding to mass atrocities, and the right of self-determination. He has been a peer reviewer for the Journal on the Use of Force and International Law, the Leiden Journal of International Law, the Indian Journal of International Law, and Global Responsibility to Protect, and a subject peer reviewer for Cambridge University Press. His research has been recognised by the International Law Association, of which he is a Member.

Graham welcomes PhD proposals across the range of his research interests, including the law governing the use of force, maritime security and the law of the sea, the Responsibility to Protect, the UN Security Council and General Assembly, and the international rule of law.

Key Publications

Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
Strategic Compliance or Tolerated Unlawfulness? The Protection of Nationals Abroad and the Erosion of the Jus ad Bellum, Melling, G. 20 Jun 2026, In: Journal of Conflict and Security Law
The protection of nationals abroad: from ‘unlawful yet tolerated’ to ‘unlawful and intolerable’., Melling, G. 17 Oct 2025, International Law and the Prohibition of Force: Exhaustion, Destruction, Rebirth?, Oxford, Oxford University Press
Has Russia Killed Article 2(4)? Evaluating the effectiveness of the prohibition of the use of force in the conduct of international affairs, Melling, G. 3 Jul 2024, In: San Diego International Law Journal
Evaluating the persisting relevance of the Uniting for Peace resolution for the maintenance of international peace and security: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Security Council Resolution 2623 (2022), Melling, G. 1 Aug 2023, In: International and Comparative Law Review
The use of force in international law, Melling, G. 11 Nov 2019, In: Journal on the Use of Force and International Law
Beyond rhetoric? Evaluating the Responsibility to Protect as a norm of humanitarian intervention, Melling, G. 7 Mar 2018, In: Journal on the Use of Force and International Law
Conceiving international law’s normative order beyond the ‘residual negative principle’, Melling, G. Nov 2018, In: Nordic Journal of International Law
The Security Council veto and Syria: responding to mass atrocities through the “Uniting for Peace” resolution, Melling, G., Dennett, A. 23 May 2018, In: Indian Journal of International Law
Murray Colin Alder, The Inherent Right of Self-Defence in International Law, Melling, G. 1 Sep 2015, In: Journal on the Use of Force and International Law
The Exercise of External Self-Determination by Indigenous Groups: The Republic of Lakotah and the Inherent Sovereignty of American Indigenous Peoples, Sargent, S., Melling, G. 22 Jul 2015, In: Sri Lanka Journal of International & Comparative Law

Professional Activity

Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
Invited talk: Confronting the Radical Disorder of the Rules-Based Order: What Role for International Law and the Use of Force? 2026
Invited talk: Confronting the Radical Disorder of the Rules-Based Order: What Role for International Law? 2025
Invited talk: The UK and humanitarian intervention: illegal and illegitimate? 2023
Invited talk: Rescuing nationals abroad: degrees of toleration 2023

Qualifications