Even the most casual observer of international organizations must at times be puzzled. It is puzzling to realize, for instance, that regardless of the public outcry over nasty acts done on the watch of some international organization or another, nothing ever seems to happen: accountability is much-discussed, but rarely materializes. It is somewhat mystifying that for all the discussion of the reform of international organizations and of their policies, and for all that these are often amended, nothing much ever seems to change. Likewise, few international organizations have lawmaking powers properly so-called, and yet international organizations seem to be highly influential. By the same token, international organizations often engage in co-operation with one another without anyone noticing it, and seemingly without having strong authorization to do so. And it must be puzzling to realize that the law tends to treat all international organizations in much the same way, regardless of whether they work for the global common good or are better seen as interest groups for a particular group of states; regardless of whether they serve a global cause or manage a particular industry; and regardless also of the sort of activities they engage in – whether they occupy themselves with questions of peace, security and disarmament or are, effectively, institutions of higher learning set up as international organizations.

Scholarship on international organizations law, like most approaches in international law and international relations (IR), is dominated by state-centric, functionalist and rational choice frameworks. According to these mainstream approaches, states are axiomatically the principal actors in international affairs, which pre-exist and create international organizations to serve their own interests and needs. To realists, international relations are structured by competition, the search for security and the struggle for power among rational, self-interested states. In this view, international organizations are epiphenomenal, reflecting extant power relations and having only a marginal impact on state behaviour.1 To IR scholars and international lawyers of a more liberal-institutionalist orientation, international organizations are designed and created by states to pursue shared goals, solve coordination problems and produce public goods.2

Chapter 8 concludes the book by reviewing its arguments and conclusions, identifying weaknesses in the methods used, and proposing ways in which these might be addressed and the research developed further, for example by involving participants in other countries. The chapter importantly notes that uncertainty and contestation remain marginal problems in the jus ad bellum, as in most areas of international law. In most cases, the requirements of international law governing resort to military force are clear and uncontested. There are many reasons to believe that the contemporary jus ad bellum has contributed to global peace and stability. This book’s examination of legal and factual uncertainty and extra-legal intuitions seeks to support and assist lawyers and states in their mission to uphold and apply this crucial area of international law, not to encourage lawyers or states to undermine or abandon it.

In most international organizations there is a certain level of trust that basic commitments are being met by the member states. Disarmament organizations,1 however, form a special case: they are often seen as subject to the motto ‘trust, but verify’ in ways that do not quite apply to others. This means that within disarmament organizations such as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) or the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), different legal issues arise when compared to other organizations, rendering them of great theoretical importance in addition to their undoubted social relevance.

The focus of this chapter is on organizational efforts to regulate, supervise, control and possibly eliminate weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

In liberal democracies, lawyers have societal obligations that are directly connected to the right of access to justice. Access to justice provides citizens with the ability to turn to the judicial and administrative bodies of the state to enforce their rights. The right of access to justice is multifaceted. It may include the ability to introduce and challenge evidence presented at trial, to have a translator when necessary to understand the trial proceedings, and to have a lawyer represent one’s interests before state judicial and administrative bodies. Modern liberal democracies have developed four institutions to realize the state’s and lawyers’ obligations to the right of all members of the political community to access a lawyer: public defender’s offices, court-appointed counsel, legal clinics, and pro bono work. These institutions aim to eliminate the access-to-justice deficit that exists in all modern liberal democracies to varying degrees.

While the diffusion of pro bono – private lawyers offering free services to people in need – has affected and reconfigured corporate law practice in many jurisdictions around the world, the Brazilian case remains particularly intriguing. In São Paulo – the largest market for legal services in Brazil – a pro bono movement emerged in 2001 and led to the creation of Instituto Pro Bono (IPB), a clearinghouse and advocacy center for the cause of voluntary legal work. Although firms were not the drivers of this process, they quickly lent support to IPB and demonstrated interest in pro bono work.

International governance is increasingly characterized by the decline of formal intergovernmental organizations as the preferred sites of rule-making, as the growth rate of intergovernmental organization has declined by 20 per cent since the beginning of the twenty-first century.1 More than a decade after the debates about fragmentation2 and regime-collision in international law,3 it now seems clear that the key question is not that, as a professional experience, international law seems divided in sometimes incoherent specialized regimes, but that international lawyers have a more dense and diverse institutional landscape to deal with.

This chapter deals with the law on the internal matters of international organizations, and more particularly, with the relations between organs of an international organization. Issues include, among others, the power of self-regulation, financial relations between organs of an organization, the creation of subsidiary organs and the applicable legal rules thereto, as well as analysis of various procedures that require the collaboration between different organs of the same organization.1 The chapter will not deal with the legal relations between an international organization and its civil servants. It will equally steer clear of the legal relationships between organizations and their member states, third parties or other international organizations.

At an international conference on access to justice hosted by the Association of the Bar of the City of New York in 2000, Jean-Luc Bedos, a partner in the Paris office of Dentons and a founder of the nongovernmental organization (NGO) Droits D’Urgence, stated point blank: “Pro bono does not exist in France.” In the same presentation, Bedos mentioned that four hundred volunteer lawyers were working with his NGO to provide legal assistance to “sans-papiers” immigrants, obviously seeing no contradiction between the two statements. About a dozen years later, PILnet: The Global Network for Public Interest Law would honor Bedos and two other French lawyers for their pioneering work in building pro bono culture in Europe, and Bedos now serves on the board of directors of PILnet, which has become the leading promoter of pro bono practice in Europe.

Behind the newspaper headlines, often an international organization can be discerned. Sometimes the connection remains somewhat hidden. When the USA chides Turkey for procuring weapons from Russia, it suggests that US manufacturers should be privileged because Turkey is a member state of NATO, the US-driven Atlantic security organization. When Poland aims to withdraw from the Istanbul Convention, outlawing domestic violence, the Council of Europe expresses concern, if only because the Istanbul Convention was concluded under its auspices. And when it turns out that mailing parcels from certain countries is cheaper than mailing similar parcels domestically, it is not always immediately realized that this may have something to do with postal rates negotiated within the Universal Postal Union.

This chapter develops a vision d’ensemble, or intertwined vision, of what is known conventionally as lawyers’ pro bono practice, an increasingly major field of research at a time largely seen as one in which the legal profession undergoes – and will undergo – its greatest transformations. It offers some insights and snapshots on pro bono as a phenomenon operating and spreading in legal practice, including in and through corporate law firms. At the same time, it approaches pro bono through an anthropological lens, as a concept related to the assumption that a structured legal institution exists in society. As such, while this chapter sheds some light on the origins and features of pro bono in France, it aims to provide a narrative and rationale for pro bono beyond its borders.

Since becoming free from British colonialism in 1960, Nigeria has experienced, in total, nearly thirty years of military rule: 1966–79 and then again from 1983–99. While the years from 1960–66 and 1979–83 might be seen as periods of Nigerian democracy, they were nonetheless fractured times. Only since 1999 has democracy in Nigeria sustainably taken hold, and even then, the last eighteen years have not been easy. There is an insurgency ongoing in the northeast against the Boko Haram network, and the Delta region of the country also continues to witness instability.