'Universal jurisdiction' is a legal principle that allows states or international bodies like the International Criminal Court criminal jurisdiction over an accused person regardless of (a) where the alleged crime was committed, (b) the accused's nationality, country of residence, or (c) any other relation to the prosecuting entity.

In 1996, Alan Sokal submitted an article to Social Text, an academic journal of cultural studies. The article, "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity", was published in the journal. It proposed that quantum gravity is a social and linguistic construct. The journal did not practice academic peer review and it did not submit the article for outside expert review by a physicist. Three weeks after its publication. Sokal revealed that the article was a hoax.