I am a legal scholar working at the intersection of legal technology, environmental governance, and international legal theory.

My research investigates how the law responds to crisis and conflict—whether doctrinal, ideological, normative, or structural. I examine how legal actors and institutions make sense of contradiction and fragmentation, especially in contexts of global disruption. My doctoral work addressed consistency in international law, and I have since written on conflicts in the climate crisis, the use of force, humanitarian and human rights law, the ontology of customary law, and legal responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.

To study these problems, I draw on argumentation theory and methods from Artificial Intelligence and logic. My research bridges doctrinal analysis with formal and computational approaches to legal reasoning, with recent work exploring how large language models and network-based methods can clarify legal justification in complex regulatory settings.

My current focus is on the climate crisis in the ocean. I analyse the normative tensions in marine governance as the ocean is framed both as a site of extraction and as a fragile ecological space. This research contributes to debates on environmental law, global distributive justice, and the epistemic limits of legal reasoning under pressure.

My current research examines how legal and technological systems shape environmental futures. I focus on how international law constructs, justifies, and manages environmental harm. This includes work on deep-sea mining, offshore wind, and ocean-based carbon removal, framed through the concept of ‘sacrifice zones’. I also analyse how Large Language Models (LLMs) and empirical methods can support compliance in marine environmental regimes, with particular attention to marine genetic resources (MGRs).

I lead a project funded by the Netherlands Empirical Legal Studies Academy on AI and regulatory enforcement in environmental law. Alongside this, I develop computational models of legal reasoning using a natural-language variant of reason-based logic (RBR), mapping decision structures in international adjudication. This work contributes to debates on coherence, discretion, and legitimacy in international law.

I am a permanent lecturer at Maastricht University, where I teach courses in legal reasoning, argumentation, global law, and legal philosophy at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

Scroll down for news and updates. I’m active on LinkedIn. You can reach me at h.jbmarcos {@} maastrichtuniversity.nl