International law is a fundamentally modern phenomenon. Tracing its roots to nineteenth-century pronouncements on the 'law of nations, ' the discipline took shape in the elaborate treaty structures of the post-First World War era and in the institutions and tribunals established after the Second World War. International law as scholars know and study it today is a product of modernism.

In The Aesthetics of International Law, Ed Morgan engages in a literary parsing of international legal texts. In order to demonstrate how these types of legal narratives are imbued with...