Introduction

Nicholas J. Rengger came to International Relations (IR) relatively late, by a circuitous route, and with unorthodox intellectual baggage. His PhD juggled aspects of Enlightenment political philosophy and approaches to the history of ideas. Only afterwards, as a freshly minted political theorist, did he begin to address IR, as he searched for a niche in the unforgiving British higher education system of late 1980s. In various places, he encountered the ‘English school of international relations’ – or at least representatives of what was left of it – not so much in Bristol, perhaps, where he spent most of his early career prior to the move to St Andrews, but certainly in Aberystwyth, Leicester, and the London School of Economics (LSE), during stints as a visiting fellow, and at BISA conferences. At that time, in those places, the English School’s (ES) influence was still clear in curricula and concepts employed. Scholars who had known figures like Charles Manning, Martin Wight, and Hedley Bull still lectured, roamed corridors, or held forth in staff clubs and local pubs. They included people like Maurice Keens-Soper and Phillip Windsor, as well as younger scholars whose work was shaped by the tradition, like James Mayall and Hidemi Suganami. Convivial to a fault, Rengger’s introduction to IR – and to the ES, in particular – was in no small part a result of conversations with all of these people and more.

Rengger’s approach to the field – especially to IR theory – was marked by these early experiences and by the texts to which they led him. He never became a card-carrying member of the ES, of course – he enjoyed buzzing about the field as a Socratic gadfly far too much for that. But the lop-sided dialogue that he started with the ES in the late 1980s continued, on and off, for the rest of his life, shaping the ways in which he framed and engaged with major issues in the field. And from the start, he found the historicist and interpretivist commitments of the early school congenial. He was manifestly impressed with Martin Wight’s byzantine essays on the history of international theory. He was also intrigued by the ways in which the early school handled the apparent tensions between the need for order in international relations (IR) and demands for justice.

The relevance of history

Nick Rengger had a vision of the practice of international relations (IR) transformed by engagement with intellectual historians and political philosophers. What this entailed in full never became clear because of his early death. That there was a mission and a vision is clear from the chapters here collected. How would Rengger have responded to them? ‘My goodness,’ he can be heard saying, ‘I had no idea I was so interesting.’ Unquestionably, he would have been delighted, honoured, and stimulated, the latter especially because of the critical tone taken by so many of the engagements with his work. He might well have asserted, in response to negative commentary upon his last book The Anti-Pelagian Imagination, that it needed to be seen in the same way that Jean-Jacques Rousseau saw his Contrat social of 1762, which is to say that it was altogether unfinished, part of a longer work entitled Institutions politiques, and that therefore readers needed to wait for the culminating volume tying everything together. The tragedy of course, in the case of both Rousseau and Rengger, is that neither work will ever be completed.

What would Rengger most have appreciated? First, the engagement with his own claims with a view to their refinement through the work of fellowtravelling luminaries, such as Gillian Rose; texts Rengger was committed to but rarely cited, such as Max Weber’s ‘Politics as a vocation’; and work he would have drawn much from, such as the New Right theorist Alain de Benoist. Second, the attempts to work out how far perceived holes in his argument were due to a mis-reading of the greatest influence upon him, Michael Oakeshott, or indeed mistaken evaluations of the work of those he ultimately termed Pelagians and anti-Pelagians alike. Third, the making of his own philosophy and its practical implications both plainer and sharper as a potential research tool, specifically by developing Rengger’s ideas about prudence and judgement. Finally, working out more clearly what he was actually arguing and what the implications of his arguments might be.

If Rengger would have acknowledged these chapters as a fitting tribute to the work he had undertaken, admired the scholarship in evidence and the eminence of the commentators, he would part-jokingly have asked what a mere intellectual historian was doing in their midst.

Introduction

Rarely does the published work of Nicholas Rengger directly engage the thought of Max Weber, a rather interesting lacuna given the centrality of Weber to the international political themes and thinkers with which Rengger engaged over the course of his career and in response to which he sought to carve out his own unique stance. Weber features in the title of Rengger’s unpublished 2001 inaugural lecture at the University of St Andrews, and a book manuscript on which Rengger was working at the time of his death was to explore the significance of Weber’s ‘Politics as a vocation’ lecture with respect to several present-day dilemmas of ethics and politics. It is only in International Relations, Political Theory and the Problem of Order that Rengger indicates at any length the great significance that he sees Weber’s thought holding for international political theory, and yet even this discussion is rather limited.

This chapter therefore explores Rengger’s notion of the modern anti-Pelagian imagination – a notion that figured prominently in his later work – with respect to Weber’s thought. It traces affinities between Rengger and Weber in their diagnoses of how rationalization and the concomitant loss of an ethic of brotherliness characterize the modern disenchantment of the world. Rengger’s wish to sustain an ethic of brotherliness meets its limits, however, in so much as his delineation of the relationship between theory and practice militates against the desire to root lives within networks of living concern. The chapter thus explores Rengger’s distinction between theory and practice, poetics and politics, in light of Weber’s discussions of the virtuosi of religion which feature prominently in Weber’s writings on the sociology of religion, but which also play a central, albeit more recessed, role in his discussion of ethics and politics as outlined in his ‘Politics as a vocation’ lecture. The chapter problematizes Rengger’s insistence on a staunch distinction between theory and practice, and poetics and politics more specifically, arguing that there is a need to recognize the important influence of the poetic, world-disclosive force of the lives of exemplary figures like Weber’s virtuosi of religion upon politics so as to sustain the sort of politics of limits and the centrality of mercy and charity that Rengger himself so values.

The term “pro bono publico” has a long-standing tradition within the American legal profession, although its definition and organizing principles have dramatically changed over time. In this chapter, we review the historical development of the contemporary US pro bono regime and then discuss the recent emergence among elite American law firms of corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a rationale for pro bono practice. In contrast to the legal professionalism rationale for pro bono, wherein lawyers owe a distinct professional obligation to provide meaningful access to the legal system, the CSR rationale locates pro bono under the umbrella of broader commitments to public service, including diversity, philanthropy, environmental sustainability, and global corporate citizenship.

Although it is hard to give a unified and standardized definition to pro bono, this practice has become increasingly institutionalized worldwide. Driven by transitional legal practice, the global market for legal services, and international rule of law campaigns, pro bono work has taken place not only in developed countries (e.g., the United States, Ireland, Canada, and Austria) but also in developing countries and so-called emerging economies, such as China, India, and Brazil. The International Bar Association (IBA) has done a great deal of work to facilitate pro bono practice throughout the world. An unprecedented international pro bono initiative by the DLA Piper law firm has yielded pro bono lawyers who donated over two hundred thousand hours in 2017. Law schools also participate in this social movement. Law students who take international public interest courses in the United States apply their knowledge in a global setting. Graduates of American law schools have even begun to practice public interest law in other counties. Therefore, pro bono has become a globalized social movement accompanying legal globalization.

The Spanish constitutional and legal system grants the right to free legal assistance for Spanish citizens as well as foreign nationals in Spain who lack the financial means to litigate or are part of certain vulnerable groups. However, many poor individuals do not meet the means test to qualify for free legal aid, as the economic threshold is very low and many nonprofit organizations are also not eligible. The decade-long economic downturn, from which Spain only recently emerged, led to drastic funding cutbacks in government support, which have not been fully restored. In addition, other administrative obstacles may effectively prevent access to legal aid. For example, even those who qualify for free legal aid may not be able to effectively access the help of a legal aid lawyer in practice, as is typically the case for asylum seekers in Spain.

Writing about international organizations and development is a daunting task due to the elusiveness of the concept of development, the manifold international institutions, instruments and policies designed to promote development and the entanglement of the development discourse with colonial and imperial practices of domination and extraction.

Chapter 5 considers evidence that disagreements about the jus ad bellum are linked to disagreements about between ‘pacificist’ and ‘interventionist’ strategic cultures ‘extra-legal’ politico-strategic and ethical principles. The chapter describes extra-legal reasoning, particularly in evaluating facts, in UK government statements and writings by eight legal scholars about the lawfulness of military action in Kosovo (1999), Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003), judges’ opinions in the ICJ cases Nicaragua (1986), Wall (2004), and Congo (2005), and in interviews and a survey with thirty-one UK-based international lawyers. The chapter concludes that lawyers’ extra-legal reasoning and views on lawfulness of force broadly align, on a continuum between pacificists preferring a restrictive jus ad bellum, and interventionists favouring an expansionist approach. But again, there are caveats. Most interventionists accept some legal prohibitions they believe are politically or ethically wrong. Most pacificists accept some justifications they politically or ethically condemn. This suggests most lawyers’ politico-strategic and ethical intuitions act as forms of cognitive biases, shaping but not wholly determining opinions about legal interpretation and the jus ad bellum.

International organizations (IOs) are sometimes derided as ‘mere’ talk-shops. This is unfair for two reasons. The first and most obvious is that international organizations do more than serve as venues for government representatives to speak to (or at) one another – they act. The European Union and, to a lesser extent, other organizations have governing powers. The United Nations, African Union and NATO conduct peace operations. The World Bank and regional development banks finance development projects. The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and multiple humanitarian organizations run refugee camps and massive aid programmes.

The chapters collected in this Cambridge Companion together demonstrate a few things about the law of international organizations – and law generally perhaps – that may not always be realized. A first point to note is that international organizations are active in nigh-on all walks of life, as these chapters suggest. There are few human activities with which international organizations have no point of contact. Whether it concerns energy provision or the movement of persons across the globe; whether it concerns disarmament or financial stability or the governance of resource extraction, international organizations are often involved in one way or another. And even in those policy domains where there is no single overarching international organization (most conspicuously perhaps the heavily fragmented domain of environmental protection), there are nonetheless entities active which may not generally be considered international organizations (largely because their founding fathers shy away from using that label), but which are remarkably similar to international organizations in all but name.

Chapter 4 considers evidence that disagreements about the jus ad bellum are linked to disagreements between ‘formalist’ and ‘dynamist’ legal cultures. The chapter describes legal interpretation techniques identified in analysis of UK government statements and writings by eight legal scholars about the lawfulness of military action in Kosovo (1999), Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003), judges’ opinions in the key ICJ cases Nicaragua (1986), Wall (2004) and Congo (2005), and in interviews and a survey with thirty-one UK-based international lawyers. The analysis suggests the jus ad bellum displays the forms of vagueness already identified: paradigms, supervaluationism, and fuzzy logic. Lawyers’ legal interpretive choices broadly aligned with their views on the lawfulness of force, on a continuum between a formalist legal culture aligning with a restrictive approach to the jus ad bellum, and a dynamist culture aligning with an expansionist approach. But the correlation has caveats: expansionist lawyers sometimes deployed formalist arguments, while restrictivist lawyers sometimes deployed dynamist arguments. Competing interpretation techniques also do not explain lawyers’ differing factual assessments and forecasts about the jus ad bellum.

Chapter 3 considers factual uncertainty in the jus ad bellum. It describes how the vagueness described in Chapter 2 can affect factual evidence in the jus ad bellum. Such situations are often chaotic, fast moving, involving actors trying to mislead, and where factual evidence is open to different interpretations. Tests such as necessity, imminence and proportionality require decision-makers to compare multiple forecasts of outcomes if force is used or not. Survey participants evaluating four fictional conflict scenarios, demonstrating how even fictional ‘facts’ elicit varying opinions. The ICJ’s rules of evidence only reduce rather than resolve factual uncertainty. The chapter suggests a second potential explanation for contestation in the jus ad bellum: lawyers resolve factual uncertainties and make forecasts using their politico-strategic and ethical intuitions, forming competing strategic cultures disagreeing about legality of specific cases and the jus ad bellum more generally. Thus ‘restrictivist’ lawyers prefer a ‘pacificist’ strategic culture, seeing little extra-legal justification for force, while ‘expansionist’ lawyers prefer an ‘interventionist’ strategic culture, seeing more such extra-legal justifications.