India, Feb. 9 -- Shirley Hazzard's iconic novel, The Great Fire, describes international law as a "beaut racket". Set in post-war Japan, soon after the framing of the UN Charter in 1945, the book explores the dire moral consequences of conflict.

The analysis, damning as it was, has also proven prescient. Today, it is difficult to avoid the question of whether international law still matters. Normative issues on what the law should comprise - the dense body of treaties, custom, and principles that regulate how states must behave - remain important. But the more conceptual issue, that is, whether international law is genuinely law, has become even more salient.

It's striking how even as the world failed to react to the US's recent militar...