Reasoned Legal Reasoning or a Bunch of Crock?

Today was "carnival" at the International Court of Justice aka The World Court. All legal and European eyes were on the Court today when it made its ruling in the Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and Montenegro. It has not had this much attention since ... heck .. the ice age. Many were hoping the Court would actually leave its mark and flex its muscles. But what does it do? It lets the government of Serbia almost free of responsibility for genocide. Mind you, I am not saying Serbia should have been found guilty for the hell of it but evidence laid out during this trial were pretty convincing. The government of Sudan must be smiling now. Whether we like it or not, state sovereigns are still the powers that be in our structural realist world. There has to be other means of holding them accountable apart from bombing them to the stone age. The ICJ should have used this case, with all its evidence and reality, to set a precedent that states that choose to sponsor genocides will pay. Maybe when a state pays billions, its citizens will learn to hold its government more accountable. Alas, we might have to wait another 100 years for this sort of opportunity again. If you are a nerd who likes to read legal jargon, here is summary of the Court ruling on the case. And why is this posting needed for a Kosovo related blog? Well, Serbia has its quirky issues many of its former yugo-partners and with Kosovo, of course. I am sure Kosovo might have taken Serbia to ICJ also except that it is not a recognized sovereignty here; which is what brings us to where we are now. This ruling, like it or not, plays in the politics here if only for rhetoric sake but it has huge symbolic impacts also.