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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

Professor Bohlander has served as a judge for many years. He has been the International Co-Investigating Judge in the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia since 2015. From 2017 until 2022, he was also an international judge of the Kosovo Specialist Chambers. He joined Durham University in 2004 as a full professor, having previously been a life-tenured member of the German judiciary since 1991. 

He has published widely on German law, English and Welsh criminal law, comparative and international criminal law, and Islamic law. 

Since 2020, his main research focus has been on the consequences of a potential contact with extraterrestrial intelligence for human law and society in the wider sense.

In his view, the distinction between traditional SETI as astronomical research for signals, bio- or technosignatures in outer space on the one hand, and UAP research into objects near or on Earth on the other, is artificial and arbitrary: If the premise is that (some) UAPs are of non-human, extraterrestrial origin, then they fall squarely under the search for technosignatures.

UAP research, on the other hand, can and often does happen in real time, whereas astronomical SETI can only ever present information about past events, often in the more distant past. This is the consequence of interstellar distances and the Einstein light speed barrier. An example is the nearest star system to Earth, Alpha Centauri, the closest star of which, Proxima Centauri, is already 4.25 light years away. In 2025, reports appeared about the discovery of elements indicative of possible biological processes in the atmosphere of Planet K2-18b in the constellation Leo, or potentially habitable conditons on Planet Kepler-22b in the constellation Cygnus, yet that information was about 124 years (K2-18b) or even 587 years (Kepler 22-b) old when it reached us. It was thus not contemporaneous with present-day Earth, as the impression created by the media may sometimes suggest.

Also, unlike SETI, UAP research must address the "high strangeness" aspects often reported by the so-called "experiencers", such as alleged abductions or other encounters with non-human entities, which in many cases have a strong likeness to what is otherwise called the paranormal. These defy traditonal scientific methods and as such related research is often discarded as pseudo-science by the natural sciences, and faces critical inquiry from psychology where the  preferred standard explanation is reference to mental states such as sleep paralysis, or to social phenomena, for example, mass delusions related to dominant societal issues of the related period in history. In other words, alien abduction experiences are often seen as an expression of otherwise purely human causes.

From a legal perspective, practical questions arise such as

  • the rules for engaging with or destroying UAP that enter a country's airspace or territory, especially if the likelihood of a non-human origin presents itself based on the technological capacities of these UAP,
  • whether and how to act generally in preparing for the case of a hostile or peaceful direct contact, 
  • whether and how far human rules of war or human rights apply in such contact scenarios, 
  • intellectual property rights to materials allegedly obtained from UFO crash retrievals and their potential use in reverse-engineering alien technology, 
  • constitutional obligations of governments to comply with parliamentary oversight,
  • the regulation of a post-detection regime,
  • the sending of messages into space (METI),
  • employer liability for injuries or casualties suffered by military or civilian personnel sent in harm's way in the context of a UAP event etc. 

In all scenarios, academic rigour in researching them is of the utmost importance, as expressed in the Declaration on SETI and UAP Research, adopted at the Symposium of 24 April 2025.

 

Links to my SETI and UAP research and engagement

 

Submission of Written Evidence on SETI and UAP to House of Lords Select Committee on UK Engagement with Space

Translations of the Declaration on SETI and UAP Research of 24 April 2025

Recordings and materials on the Symposium “Grounding the SETI and UAP Debate” of 24 April 2025

Warten auf Godot - Sinn und Unsinn der gegenwärtigen Debatte zur UAP Disclosure

Letter to The Guardian - 14 Feb 2025

Contact with extraterrestrial intelligence and human law

Alien encounter narratives in a forensic environment

Rechtliche Aspekte des Kontakts mit ausserirdischer Intelligenz

Es ist an der Zeit, dass die Menschheit ein planetares Speziesbewusstsein entwickelt

"Joining the galactic club": what price admission?

Metalaw - What is it good for?

Interview: "Les OVNIs entrent à la Fac" (NEXUS May-June 2025)

Radio interview on Canadian Global News Radio 980 CKNW on US congressional UAP hearings

How would humans react to contact with extraterrestrials? - The Debrief

Academics at Durham law school and St Andrews university launch global online survey

Limina Special Volume

Human life after contact with extraterrestrial civilisations - Call for contributions

"Joining the Galactic Club" finalist in 2023 Canopus Awards

WTUFO Podcast with Caleb Mayo 12 April 2025

"Take me to your lawyer" - The Micah Hanks Programme | Podcast

International Symposium on Professor Bohlander's book "Contact with Extraterrestrial Intelligence and Human Law"

International Law and Life in Space: Developments

Alien Conversations

SETI and the Consequences

Research interests

  • Contact with extraterrestrial intelligence and its impact on human law
  • Legal aspects of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI)
  • International and comparative criminal law

Publications

Authored book

Book review

Chapter in book

Conference Paper

Edited book

Journal Article

Manual

Newspaper/Magazine Article

Other (Print)

Scholarly Edition

Supervision students