Constructing Narratives of Change – The War against Ukraine
as a Transformational Moment for International Law

Heike Krieger

The article examines how narratives of foundational change are constructed in international law. It addresses
the heuristic purposes of certain metaphors and their impact on interpretative processes and highlights the
related methodological difficulties. By relying on insights from historiography the paper addresses three different concepts that have been used in the international legal literature to construct narratives of change: the metaphors of "Grotian moments" (Falk) and "Sattelzeit" (Kosselleck) and the heuristic device of ideal types (Weber) as a means for differential analysis. Based on these considerations, the paper discusses the implications for narratives of transformation concerning the war against Ukraine by differentiating between two major approaches: one from an internal doctrinal perspective of the law and one from an external perspective of the relationship between law and power.