438 Between Yesterday and Tomorrow (1914– )Court’s response, handed down in 2010, proved to be the very soul of cau-
tion. It ruled that the issuing of an in de pen dence declaration did not, in it-
self, violate international law. In other words, it was no violation of interna-
tional law to claim to be in de pen dent. But the Court pointedly refrained
from saying what the actual eff ect of the declaration was (if any at all). In
practical terms, therefore, the Court merely treated the issuing of the decla-
ration as an exercise of free speech, and left it at that.
Th e fear (or hope) that self- determination might prove to be a more pow-
erful and wide- ranging principle than had fi rst been envisaged was there-
fore still very much alive, and contested, in the early years of the twenty- fi rst
century. It was a telling indication of how threatening some principles of
international law can be— especially if they should capture the imagination
of the press and public. So long as international law played little role in the
daily po liti cal life of the world, such concerns would be of little moment. But
starting around 1980, international law began to loom much larger on the
world scene that it ever had before. Some were greatly heartened by this de-
velopment. Others were not.