The four volumes of Shabtai Rosenne's classic work on the law and practice of the International Court of Justice (ICJ or Court) have been expertly edited and updated by Professor Malcolm N. Shaw in these four elegantly produced volumes. The shelves in the office of every judge of the Court contain not only the Reports of the judgments, advisory opinions, orders, and pleadings before the Permanent Court of International Justice (PCIJ), and the comparable volumes of the International Court of Justice; they contain as well the four volumes of Rosenne's unmatched work. Those volumes were described in open court by the then president of the Court, Hisashi Owada, shortly after Rosenne's death in 2010, as a “landmark treatise” which remains “an indispensable guide to the role and functioning of this Court, and serves as the first port of call for international lawyers and diplomats” in understanding the work of the Court (Vol. I, p. viii). This meticulous elaboration of the set, including its comprehensive references to other sources and articles in the extensive footnotes, ensures its continuing vitality.
Rosenne's work is not an analysis of the jurisprudence of the Court. In Volume I, it sets out the history of the establishment of the International Court of Justice; the role of the PCIJ and ICJ in the League of Nations and the United Nations; the effect of the Court's judgments and advisory opinions; the place of the judges and the registry; and the Court's finance and administration.
Volume II treats the Court's jurisdiction. While the Court is the only standing international court of general jurisdiction, that jurisdiction is not broadly compulsory but must be established in each case. That fundamental fact has given rise to the construction of a jurisdictional regime of a complexity and subtlety that may be unmatched by any court of any time.
Volume III is an exhaustive analysis of the procedure of the Court. For any counsel of a state considering resort to the Court, that analysis and that on the Court's jurisdiction certainly comprise the first—and perhaps the last—port of call.
Volume IV records the periodic composition of the PCIJ and ICJ and republishes the texts of the United Nations Charter, the ICJ Statute, the 1978–2015 version of the Rules of Court, and the Court's Practice Directions.
Hugh Thirlway's single-volume summary and analysis of the role, work, and record of the Court is designedly not meant to compete with Rosenne's masterpiece, nor with other highly valued massive works. It rather is a lucid, penetrating survey of the composition, functioning, and attainments of the Court, written by the Court's former, long-serving principal legal secretary. Thirlway served the Court with exceptional distinction. The stamp of his acute analysis and felicitous style is found in a multiplicity of the Court's judgments and advisory opinions. His book is one of his several significant contributions to the literature of the Court.
He concludes by commenting briefly on recent published criticism of the workings of the Court. While he acknowledges the force of some of that criticism, his broad assessment is that the Court has made significant contributions to the adjudication of international disputes and the development of international law, an evaluation with which this reviewer agrees. As long ago as 1934, Dr. H. Lauterpacht, in his seminal Development of International Law by the Permanent Court of International Justice, demonstrated the importance of the Court's contributions to the development of international law. The Court's sound and successful disposition of a number of international boundary disputes, such as the vast territorial dispute between Chad and Libya, illustrates its many achievements in matters of land and maritime boundaries, a large proportion of its docket. However, its contributions have not been confined to boundary disputes.
Recent decades mark a high tide in international adjudication and arbitration, the highest in human history. For the past twenty-five years, the International Court of Justice has attained a relatively high level of achievement. Investor/state arbitration, which flourishes, latterly has sustained unjustified criticism, and maintenance of its attainments is not assured in either institutional settings such as that of NAFTA or through bilateral investment treaties. The European Union, itself an international organization of great attainments, has presumed to declare investor/state arbitration “dead,” an evaluation which does it no credit. International adjudication, most notably by the Court, has also suffered its reverses ranging from the defeat of efforts to enable adherence of the United States to the PCIJ Statute in the 1930s to the decline of the Optional Clause thereafter. The outlook for international adjudication is mixed, but the record and potential of the World Court is predominantly positive.
