Most states will live under artificial intelligence built somewhere else. My work asks what international law requires of this arrangement.

Mujib Jimoh

Nigerian-qualified lawyer and legal scholar. International law, the regulation of artificial intelligence, and the African regional human rights system.

Background

I read law at the University of Ibadan, graduating with First Class Honours in the top one percent of my class, qualified at the Nigerian Bar, and took my LLM at Duke University School of Law as a Horowitz Scholar.

I practiced for four years at Banwo & Ighodalo in Lagos, and I am now an analyst at Meridiam Infrastructure North America Corporation in Washington, D.C. I am a Salzburg Cutler Fellow and a Fellow of the Society for Advanced Legal Studies. I have published more than twenty sole-authored articles, fourteen of them in peer-reviewed journals, I serve on a journal editorial board, and I have reviewed manuscripts for several journals across many academic publishers. I have presented my work at conferences and workshops in the United States, Canada, Switzerland, Sweden, Uganda, and South Africa, including at Duke Law School, ETH Zürich, the University of Ottawa, the Salzburg Cutler Fellows Program, and the Centre for Human Rights at the University of Pretoria.

Research

My research asks two questions. Where does existing international law extend to artificial intelligence, and where it does not, what should new rules look like, and who gets to write them?

I pursue these questions in three movements, from norms, to state strategy, to institutional design. In plain terms, they ask what the law is, what states should do, and what we must build.

Norms

What international law already requires of states on artificial intelligence. I argue fairness, accountability, transparency, and privacy have crystallized into customary international law, which means these principles bind every state, including the many with no AI legislation at all.

The Customary International Law of AI Governance, Emory International Law Review

State strategy

What a state should do with those norms, especially a state receiving advanced AI rather than building it. A second strand asks whether the sorting of who is judged by machine and who by a human being is hardening into a ground of discrimination in its own right.

Regulating Imported Intelligence, and Algorithmic Subjection as a Ground of Discrimination, both in progress

Institutional design

What institutions make good AI regulation possible for states too small to do it alone. Working from the Caribbean, I am developing a theory of pooled regulation, comparing CARICOM and the African Union.

In progress

Publications

Artificial intelligence and technology law

  1. The First AI Treaty as Expressive Hard Law: Signature, Supervision and the Space Between Fordham International Law Journal Online, vol 50 (2026) forthcoming
  2. The Customary International Law of AI Governance Emory International Law Review, vol 41 (2026) forthcoming
  3. Achieving Fair AI in Africa? Ideas from the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights Science & Public Policy, vol 53 (2026) 316 peer reviewed
  4. A Prolegomenon on Deepfake and the Human Rights in the African Charter Global Campus Human Rights Journal, vol 8 (2024) 49 peer reviewed
  5. The Quest for Information Privacy in Africa: A Critique of the Makulilo-Yilma Debate African Journal on Privacy & Data Protection, vol 1 (2024) 1 peer reviewed
  6. Critiquing the U.S. Cyber Characterization, Attribution, and Retaliation Laws and Policies Computer Law & Security Review, vol 50 (2023) peer reviewed
  7. The Right to Democratic Participation in Africa in the Era of Deepfake Pretoria Student Law Review, vol 17 (2023) 106 peer reviewed
  8. The Place of Digital Surveillance under the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the African Human Rights System in the Era of Modern Technology African Journal of Legal Issues in Technology & Innovation, vol 1 (2023) 113 peer reviewed
  9. Advancing Online Dispute Resolution in Nigeria: Current Opportunities, Legal Challenges and the Ways Forward Journal of Sustainable Development Law & Policy, vol 11 (2020) 407 peer reviewed

International law and international human rights law

  1. The (Ir)relevance of Traditional African Values in Contemporary Human Rights Adjudication Human Rights Quarterly, vol 49 (May 2027) forthcoming, peer reviewed
  2. When Consensus Silences Rights: Judicial Consistency and the Rights of the LGBTQIA People in Africa Transnational Law & Contemporary Problems, vol 36 (2026) forthcoming
  3. Conditional Right to Child Education in Nigeria: Punishing the Child for the Parents’ Sins Vienna Journal on International Constitutional Law, vol 19 (2025) 121 peer reviewed
  4. The Principle of Procedural Legality in International Human Rights Law California Western International Law Journal, vol 54 (2024) 31
  5. The Status of New Rights before the African Commission and the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights Oregon Review of International Law, vol 25 (2024) 147
  6. Investigating the Responses of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights to the Criticisms of the African Charter Rutgers International Law & Human Rights Journal, vol 4 (2023) 1
  7. The Evolutive Interpretation of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights Indonesian Journal of International & Comparative Law, vol 10 (2023) 43 peer reviewed
  8. UN Resolutions as ‘Hard-Law’ in Armed Conflict Southern University Law Review, vol 51 (2023) 69
  9. A Critique of the Seizure Criteria of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights African Human Rights Law Journal, vol 22 (2022) 362 peer reviewed

Contract and commercial law

  1. Very Simple. Just Look at the Evidence! Interpreting Contradictions in Words and Figures in Legal Documents in Common Law Jurisdictions Penn State Law Review, vol 130 (2026) 37
  2. Newspaper Copyright and the Permissible Adaptation for Playwrights in Nigeria: Lessons from Ò̀lò̀tūré The Gravitas Review of Business & Property Law, vol 13 (2022) 66 peer reviewed
  3. Pre-Judgment Interest in the Absence of Contract, Mercantile Usage or Statute: An Investigation of Nigerian Supreme Court Authorities University of Lagos Law Review, vol 5 (2022) 220 peer reviewed
  4. Date Formats: A Rare Headache in the Construction of Contractual Documents The Gravitas Review of Business & Property Law, vol 11 (2020) 54 peer reviewed

Work in progress

  1. Regulating Imported Intelligence: A Theory of AI Risk Regulation for Recipient States draft in progress
  2. Algorithmic Subjection as a Ground of Discrimination draft in progress
  3. Repairing International Law’s Reputational Crisis in the Age of Deepfakes draft available on request

Elsewhere

Write to me at mujibjimoh@yahoo.com.