The wheels of justice are barely turning

Hugh nicely summarized the International Court of Justice's (ICJ) ruling on Bosnian genocide today. To my mind, the most remarkable thing about the ruling is that it is appearing in 2007, almost twelve years after the Bosnian war ended. Bosnia originally filed the case in 1993, but a variety of procedural maneuvers and jurisdictional questions ...

By , a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies.

Hugh nicely summarized the International Court of Justice's (ICJ) ruling on Bosnian genocide today. To my mind, the most remarkable thing about the ruling is that it is appearing in 2007, almost twelve years after the Bosnian war ended. Bosnia originally filed the case in 1993, but a variety of procedural maneuvers and jurisdictional questions delayed actual arguments until last year.

Hugh nicely summarized the International Court of Justice's (ICJ) ruling on Bosnian genocide today. To my mind, the most remarkable thing about the ruling is that it is appearing in 2007, almost twelve years after the Bosnian war ended. Bosnia originally filed the case in 1993, but a variety of procedural maneuvers and jurisdictional questions delayed actual arguments until last year.

That time lag itself is quite a commentary on the impending irrelevance of the ICJ. Don't get me wrong: It's not that international law is dead, it's just that this particular court—which handles only certain disputes between sovereign states, and does so at a glacial pace—has little to contribute. The new International Criminal Court is handling crimes against humanity and genocide, and the World Trade Organization covers most economic disputes. The ICJ has become a dusty relic, and this verdict's tardiness is the proof.

David Bosco is a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. He is the author of The Poseidon Project: The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans. Twitter: @multilateralist

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