Legal warfare is one of the least known, yet broadest reaching, forms of combat in the modern world. Even if you’ve never heard of it, you’ve likely been affected by it. It is used by terrorist groups to turn public opinion in their favor, by governments to brainwash civilians, and by semi-legitimate nonprofit organizations to bankrupt and silence critics.
Brooke Goldstein, a human rights attorney and award-winning filmmaker, describes the growing problem as a “perversion of the legal system.” Goldstein founded The Lawfare Project just over two years ago, and she is fighting back against nations and organizations that abuse the legal system to wage war.
Legal warfare, also called “lawfare,” is defined as the abuse of law as a weapon of war. It takes several forms. The Lawfare Project mainly assists victims of lawfare exercising their rights to speak freely about issues of national security. These lawsuits attempt to inhibit free speech on issues of national security by filing defamation lawsuits against media, think tanks, and legal experts.
With this problem at the forefront, legal experts gathered in New York on May 23 for a panel discussion, “Lawfare: Expert Perspectives.”
Goldstein was joined on the panel by Ambassador Ido Aharoni, the consul general of Israel in New York; Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the district attorney of New York County; and representatives from Mayer Brown, a global lawfirm.
“Terrorists realize they aren’t going to win a war against the United States by blowing people up,” Goldstein told The Epoch Times over the phone. “What they’ve chosen to do is wage legal warfare—lawfare.”
“It’s as much a publicity battle as it is a physical war on the battlefield. And on top of it, they’re using legal systems to undermine our ability to even speak about these issues,” she said.
Victims of lawfare are not just the people being sued, however, since the tactic is also intended to mislead the public.
One example of lawfare is the set of instructions found in an al-Qaeda training manual. The 18-chapter manual, discovered in 2000 by police in Manchester, England, was translated by the FBI and posted to the Justice Department website.
The manual instructed al-Qaeda operatives to file false claims that they were tortured, if they are captured. According to Goldstein, this tacit effectively makes the operatives victims in the eyes of the public, instead of terrorists.
Legal warfare has also been directly integrated into the military strategies of some governments.
Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula advised the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission on these issues on Jan. 27, 2011, pointing to China’s use of legal warfare and other unconventional forms of warfare.
One of the Chinese regime’s strategies is called the Three Warfares. The three warfares referred to are psychological warfare, legal warfare, and influence.
Deptula said the Chinese military “uses legal arguments to manipulate international law to their advantage and legitimize Chinese actions. Legal warfare was defined in the most recent Annual Report to Congress as: using international and domestic laws to gain international support and manage possible political repercussions of China’s military actions.”
The strategy intends to “undermine a superior enemy’s military abilities, as well as influencing the enemy civilian leadership’s ‘will to fight,'” he said, according to a transcript.
Deptula said the Chinese regime uses international and domestic law to “gain international support and manage possible political repercussions of China’s military actions. These arguments include using forums such as the United Nations to argue their claims, claiming their own rights have been violated, or insisting that all issues are domestic issues and therefore not of concern to outsiders.”
“China is very adept at using the international forums to avoid incidents. In the event of a conflict with Taiwan or any other adversary, the PRC will likely manipulate the international legal system to their own advantage, claiming sovereignty, right of defense, or interference by an outside party as illegal.”
“We’re seeing a lot of lawfare being used by China and Russia,” said Goldstein.
Looking at the big picture, Goldstein says, the problem with legal warfare is that it delegitimizes the legal systems.
“The entire international legal system has been undermined,” she said. “It’s absolutely imperative that we work to safeguard our legal system, or we risk undermining the system in its entirety—and we’ve already gone pretty far down that road.”
At the event, Mayer Brown announced a “counter-lawfare initiative” that would provide its attorneys pro bono to defend victims of lawfare.
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