International law had barely escaped its ‘ontological’ phase when it was promptly declared dead. The coroner, Slavoj Žižek, declared that the ‘war on terrorism’ has delivered the coup de grâce to an international order based on sovereign equality and capable of constraining power. The global political order was now composed of enemies and friends, not sovereign equals. Others, of a less morbid persuasion, have argued instead that there is a new constitution afoot. On this view, international law has been not fatally wounded by the events of 2001 but transformed by them. The Great Powers are certainly ‘impatient with the diplomatic niceties of international law enforcement’ but international law, ever adaptable and endlessly pragmatic, will accommodate the new imperatives.

These arguments are not absurd but they do reflect two common vanities in discussions of public international law and its role in international affairs: a tendency to accept the terminal impotence of the discipline and a belief in the novelty of ‘new world orders’ (a collective obsession since the Twin Towers fell).

In contrast, the image of international legal order presented in this book is of a system marked, since 1815 by a certain continuity of structure. Juridical sovereignty underpins this structure but this sovereignty is protean and flexible and is marked through the interplay of three languages: the languages of Great Power prerogative, outlawry (or anti-pluralism) and sovereign equality.