Legal Framework for International Business

II.The English School

The IR-IL divide has appeared most distinctly in the United States, although that is not to say that it isn’t present elsewhere. In the United Kingdom, however, one tradition of IR theory has continued to view international law as an important part of international politics: the so-called English School, which shares some features with constructivist theories. Scholars of the English School embrace the role of law, rules, and norms in international society, with some describing their work as following in the ‘Gratian tradition’, referring to Hugo Grotius, a seventeenth-century international legal scholar. Writers such as Hedley Bull argue that they can accept realist premises regarding the nature of power in the international system and nonetheless identify a place for law and rule-governed behavior (Bull 1977). Bull argues, for example, that even though international politics is anarchic, and lacks the hierarchy and structure of domestic politics, this does not mean that rules and indeed law cannot govern state behavior. He argues rather that international society is an anarchical [ænɑ́:rkik(əl)] society, in that there is no single hierarchical supranational power, but that is a society nonetheless that is based on shared institutions and conventions. He identifies international law as an important institution in world politics, along with other institutions, such as state sovereignty, international diplomacy, warfare and the balance of power. The English School perspective on international law can thus be seen as combining some of the views of both realists and constructivists.

The English School is also an important approach because it is one of the few approaches in international relations to explicitly examine the origins of international society-and, by implication, the origins of the international legal order- in Europe and its spread to the rest of the world through empire and colonial rule. Much of realist or liberal theorizing, in contrast, tends to ignore the question of the origins of the current international order, taking instead a rather ahistorical approach to international relations.