International Law and the Politics of History by Anne Orford contributes to the ongoing debate about how best to study the history of international law. Orford is one of the protagonists in this debate, and this book offers a highly sophisticated critique of the empiricist-contextualist method and how it has been employed by international lawyers and historians to depoliticize the intrinsically political and partisan field of international law.

Four “empiricist rules” are discussed – the avoidance of anachronism, the need to properly contextualize legal texts, the prohibition against presentism, and the prohibition of writing narratives that move between different periods – all of which are problematic for international lawyers from a “practical, philosophical, and political perspective” (p. 98). From a practical standpoint, the juridical task often requires lawyers to make an argument by moving the materials from the past to the present context to persuade audiences in today's settings. On a philosophical level, Orford stresses that there is no unmediated access to past materials. Scholars are always already situated in present contexts, including the academic institutions in which they operate, and their approach to the past is thus necessarily shaped by them. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, in the contemporary world of multiple crises, where the international legal order has been increasingly judicialized and constitutionalized, legal scholars and historians will be better off if they foreground the adversarial nature of international law and engage with its politics with the enhanced sense of responsibility and urgency.

This book adds another momentum to the important historiographical debate while inviting broader reflection on the roles of scholarship. For me, Orford's critique is both empowering and useful in many ways. She persuasively reasserts the necessity to understand the specific modality of law and to recognize our unavoidable struggles for its meaning. Elsewhere, she cautions against “unquestioning deference to philosophical truth claims”, which can be extended to historical truth claims insofar as they may offer “less assistance in comprehending or contesting the political forces” today.Footnote ¹ Relatedly, her analysis captures the sophistication that the international law discipline has achieved. For instance, she rightly observes at the outset that “there are very few lawyers for whom the idea that international law is historically situated or political is novel or even controversial” (p. 15). Orford thus shows that a powerful and productive critique of the contemporary discipline should target this nuanced picture and avoid any straw man. Finally, the book serves as a salutary reminder of the inextricable link between epistemology and ethics. As such, it will be of great interest not only for academics working on international legal histories, but also those who seek to reflect on the multiple tasks of jurists, the roles of legal scholarship, and the connection between what one regards as a good method and what one perceives to be a good life.