Like Dickens' legendary case Jarndyce v. Jarndyce in Bleak House, this one dragged on largely because Serbia challenged the court's jurisdiction. The claim was that between the time Yugoslavia dissolved and the time Serbia reconstituted, the country wasn't a party to the relevant treaties. But in 1996, the court ruled that it had jurisdiction. And this week it said, 11 years later, that this previous decision was, indeed, binding. ("Congratulations, Mr. Jarndyce! You were right all along! Too bad about those lost years, but the wheels of justice run slowly and all that. Stiff upper lip.") In his dissenting opinion, Jordanian Judge Awn Shawkat Al-Khasawneh (who is also the ICJ's vice president) argues with some heat that the court's own blunders allowed Serbia to launch interminable Dickensian squabbles.