Operating in the shadow of its more celebrated counterpart, the International Criminal Court, limited public attention has been devoted in recent years to its precursor, the International Court of Justice (ICJ). In the guise of a text devoted to detailing its history and workings, this book argues for the ICJ’s continued viability and relevance.
Coming on the heels of Kolb’s, Professor of international law at the University of Geneva, recent work The International Court of Justice (Kolb, 2013), this is an excellent sequel or complement. Both are translated from the original French, but while the former was targeted at a legal audience, the latter is designed to appeal to a broader readership, the non-specialist or lay reader. In the preface, the author outlines the book’s limitations, asserting that it is not intended to be comprehensive or exhaustive, but rather a selective treatment of important issues in a readable style.
All major topics are covered: the history of the Court, its institutional background, relationship to other tribunals and composition. Court procedure, jurisdiction, internal administration, relation to international law, judicial process and jurisprudence are also addressed. Portraits (e.g. biographic information) on many judges of the Court are also included. An appendix comprises a chronology of judgments, advisory opinions and orders the Court has rendered. A notable deliberate omission is a detailed discussion of the cases before the Court, which, as the author notes, is beyond the scope of the book and can be readily found elsewhere.
Given the plethora of books about the court, this work is distinctive, as it serves a dual purpose. It is both a standalone treatise on the Court and, at the same time as its title implies, a useful vade macum. Thus, one of the virtues of this book is its versatility, both a scholarly introduction to the subject and useful reference. It parallels comparable works such as The Cambridge Companion to International Law (Crawford & Koskenniemi 2012) (RR 2013/048), which, as an ancillary text, has a similar purpose, but is much less ambitious than the two-volume The Law and Procedure of the International Court of Justice (Thirlway 2013). Kolb cites The World Court: What It Is and How It Works (Rosenne, 2003) as the closest approximation.
The book is an auspicious beginning to the publisher’s projected series on international courts and tribunals. But, with a list price of about $300, it is not an idle purchase. Still, as a significant contribution to the literature on the Court, it is a must for law and academic libraries supporting international law programs and will prove useful to students, academics and practitioners of public international law. At nearly 500 pages, however, casual readers are apt to find its length intimidating and intellectual rigor hard-going – the author’s efforts to use “simple and understandable” language notwithstanding – reducing its general appeal.
