Wolfgang Kaleck’s latest book is a thoughtful defence of the power of international law and human rights when confronted by powerful government or commercial actors. It is up-to-date and speaks to concerns shared by many readers of this Journal. The author founded and heads the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, wrote the 2015 classic Double Standards: International Criminal Law and the West, and has pioneered strategic human rights litigation before national and international courts. He argues that the defence of international law is ‘not a technocratic matter to be exclusively discussed by lawyers and diplomats, but a societal task’. This takes on added significance when traditional multilateral diplomacy – constrained by rotation, often at the expense of available technical expertise – allows oversight crises to grow as seen at the International Criminal Court. Kaleck could hardly be further removed from such debilitating, intra-governmental turf wars. For him, ‘international law has never been neutral – it has always been shaped by power interests. Nevertheless, it remains an important tool, especially for less powerful states and oppressed communities, to curb violence and measure politics against common rules’. He is acutely tuned to the predicaments and perspectives of former colonies. While international criminal law ‘does not end wars and rarely addresses the root-causes of violence[,] it shifts the line of what is possible and opens up spaces for reckoning and justice’. His book invites broader participation in those spaces, focusing also on corporate responsibility and the ‘legal struggle against climate change’. The book is written in an inclusive manner – not in legalese – inviting critical reflection in every chapter.