From Baghdad to Gaza, legal storytelling as a strategic power in international law
For years, legal storytelling has aided the formation of dominant narratives in international law, from the post 9/11 years to zionist narratives in the present, skewing the scales of international law.
Saif Ali
Published on: 12 July 2025, 12:53 pm
INTERNATIONAL LAW IS GOVERNED not only by formal rules but also by narratives that attach meaning to those rules. This occurrence is “legal storytelling” and has developed as a powerful tool in international law. Narratives can also challenge dominant ideas, reveal inequalities, and foster empathy among decision-makers.
However, as Susan Mark points out, international law is not simply a neutral system of rules but a battlefield where dominant narratives often justify the interests of powerful actors. Thus, legal narratives are frequently employed strategically to amplify international norms and secure informational authority, as seen in Russia's justifications for invading Ukraine or the United States' rationale for 'preventive war' in Iraq.
On the morning of April 13, Israel attacked Iranian nuclear and military installations, invoking Article 51 of the UN Charter by portraying Iran's alleged uranium weaponisation as an imminent threat to both international peace and Israel's national security. Such legal justification through storytelling is not a new technique; just as the U.S. manufactured legal legitimacy for the war on Iraq through a carefully constructed narrative of 'preventive war', Israel today employs similar discourse to justify its actions in Gaza and its strike on Iran.
These examples illustrate that legal storytelling functions not merely to determine legal positions but to construct legitimacy and refine legal identity. Against this background, this post examines the role of narrative setting in claiming legal identity under International Law. It argues that not only treaties or customs form a legal identity, but narrative framing through storytelling is also central to international law governance. While legal storytelling is open to all parties, in practice and actuality, structural hierarchies decide which story prevails, especially when superpowers have the capacity to manufacture consent for the story to prevail.
However, as Susan Mark points out, international law is not simply a neutral system of rules but a battlefield where dominant narratives often justify the interests of powerful actors.
Legal storytelling and the narrative shift in International Law
International Law, particularly post 9/11, has become a narrative setting space where legality finds its way through compelling stories and not merely by legal rules. Garry Minda, in his article Narratives of International Law and Literature After 9/11, argues that "International law lives on narrative, and so does literature" and that international law functions less as a neutral rule and more as a performative practice, shaped by who tells the story and the global institutions that receive it.
Anne Orford (2003) extends this by critiquing how narratives of humanitarian intervention legitimise military action by powerful states. She examines legal, political, and media language to show how "saviour" discourse shrouds the geopolitical interest. Thus, legal storytelling is not merely a legal argument but about 'who tells the story'. As a result, the question of "whose story gets heard" becomes central. As the rules of international law have to be interpreted by someone, this act of interpretation leads to manipulation by superpowers that have the ability to manufacture consent due to their greater institutional access, media control, and diplomatic grip.
Narratives of imminent threat, identity and legitimacy: Iraq and Gaza
The U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 remains a classic example of how legal storytelling manufactures legitimacy for the use of force. The U.S. has always tried to maintain its hegemony through the threat or use of military force, evident through the official rhetoric of the National Security Strategy of the United States of America, September 2002, "Our forces will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build-up in hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States".
