The Law and Politics of the Kosovo Advisory Opinion

• Provides a comprehensive understanding of the law and politics of the International Court of Justice's controversial opinion on the legality of Kosovo's declaration of independence
• Considers why the question came before the Court in the first place, how political arguments were adapted to legal ones in the context of the pleadings, and what the Court made of this
• Demonstrates the role of politics in international adjudication through the case study of the Kosovo Opinion
• Written by a team of leading contributors, including James Crawford, Bruno Simma, and Martti Koskenniemi

This volume is an edited collection of essays on various aspects of the 2010 Kosovo Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice. The main theme of the book is the interplay between law and politics regarding Kosovo's independence generally and the advisory opinion specifically. How and why did the Court become the battleground in which Kosovo's independence was to be fought out (or not)? How and why did political arguments in favour of Kosovo's independence (e.g. that Kosovo was a unique, sui generis case which set no precedent for other secessionist territories) change in the formal, legal setting of advisory proceedings before the Court? How and why did states supporting either Kosovo or Serbia choose to frame their arguments? How did the Court perceive them? What did the Court want to achieve, and did it succeed in doing so? And how was the opinion received, and what broader implications did it have so far? These are the questions that the book hopes to shed some light on. To do so, the editors assembled a stellar cast of contributors, many of whom acted as counsel or advisors in the case, as well a number of eminent scholars of politics and international relations whose pieces further enrich the book and give it an interdisciplinary angle. The book thus tells the story of the case, places it within its broader political context, and so attempts to advance our understanding of how such cases are initiated, litigated and decided, and what broader purposes they may or may not serve.

Readership: Students and academics in the field of international law and statehood; practitioners and government legal advisers working with these issues