Pitt Professor Says the Decision on the Legal Status of Kosovo’s Declaration of Independence From Serbia Is the “Hottest Issue in International Law in Decades”

PITTSBURGH—Calling the Court of Justice’s decision on the legal status of Kosovo’s Declaration of Independence from Serbia “the hottest issue in international law in decades,” University of Pittsburgh Professor Robert M. Hayden, director of Pitt’s Center for Russian and East European Studies, is available to comment on the significance of the court’s ruling that Kosovo's declaration of independence from Serbia in 2008 did not violate international law and what it means for Kosovo.

A professor of anthropology, law, and public and international affairs, Hayden is a leading expert on politics and law in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Serbia. He lived in Serbia for six years and has studied the area for 30 years. Hayden is the author of Blueprints for a House Divided: The Constitutional Logic of the Yugoslav Conflict (University of Michigan Press, 2000).

Prior to the 1999 NATO bombings in the region, Hayden traveled to Paris with Milan Panic, a Yugoslav/American businessman and former prime minister of Yugoslavia, in an effort to avert further escalation of the situation.

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