It has been nearly four decades since Felice Morgenstern delivered her ‘Lauterpacht lectures’ and published them in book form as Legal Problems of International Organizations. The book serves as something of an informal litmus test for international organization lawyers: one of those classic texts that one simply must have read at some point. Why some books acquire this status and others do not remains mysterious, something sociologists of science may wish to investigate in order to come to a general hypothesis, but in Morgenstern’s case the answer seems fairly straightforward, and consists of two, maybe three, elements.