This project will critically reflect on the consequences of the growing confrontation between the defenders of the so-called rules-based international order and the defenders of international law for the prospect of a law-governed world, or its potential collapse. We seek to gauge the implications of this normative divide on the ordering, protective and emancipatory functions of international law in order to grasp the direction in which the world is heading, whether we are seeing the strengthening of existing rules or their unravelling and replacement with new ones, and consequently, what, if anything, can be done to shape these developments in a way that approximates the shared aspiration of the world to be ruled by the force of law, and not the law of force.