Lawfare

Lawfare is a recently coined word not yet appearing in the Oxford English Dictionary, a portmanteau of the words law and warfare, said to describe a form of asymmetric warfare. Lawfare is asserted by some to be the illegitimate use of domestic or international law with the intention of damaging an opponent, winning a public relations victory, financially crippling an opponent, or tying up the opponent's time so that they cannot pursue other ventures such as running for public office, similar to a SLAPP (strategic lawsuit against public participation) lawsuit.

Origin of the term

Perhaps the first use of the term "lawfare" was in the 1975 manuscript Whither Goeth the Law, which argues that the Western legal system has become overly contentious and utilitarian as compared to the more humanitarian, norm-based Eastern system.

A more frequently cited use of the term was Charles J. Dunlap, Jr.'s 2001 essay authored for Harvard's Carr Center. In that essay, Dunlap defines lawfare as "the use of law as a weapon of war". He later expanded on the definition, explaining lawfare was "the exploitation of real, perceived, or even orchestrated incidents of law-of-war violations being employed as an unconventional means of confronting" a superior military power.