Wiktionary

lawfare

Englisch

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WOTD – 8 April 2025

Etymology

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Blend of law +‎ warfare.[1][2]

Pronunciation

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Nomen

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lawfare (uncountable)

  1. (informal) The bringing of legal proceedings against an opponent, often only to attack, harass, or intimidate. [from 19th c.]
    • [1842], [Henry Downes Miles], chapter X, in Will Watch: A Tale of the Coast. […], London: W. M. Clark, […], →OCLC, page 79:
      […] Watch […] proceeded to the door, which he tried, and there discovered that that official had not only taken his parole d'honneur [word of honour; promise], but had adopted the additional security of turning the key; and knowing that circumstance had vacated the pre-existent treaty between them, by all the rules of civilised nations, whether in lawfare or warfare, he proceeded at once to the window; whereform, the ostler having brought him, by pre-arrangement, a ladder, he descended in safety to the yard; […]
    • 1959, William G[orham] Rice [Jr.], “The Political-legal Frontier”, in Law among States in Federacy: A Survey of Decisions of the Swiss Federal Tribunal in Intercantonal Controversies, Appleton, Wis.: C. C. Nelson Publishing Company, →OCLC, page 318:
      The canton is clearly reduced, but not to the status of a mere private corporation. It stil is a state with standing in cort to wage some lawfare for itself and for its folk.
      The text uses idiosyncratic spelling: see the chapter entitled “Foreword on Form”, pages 5–19.
    • 1975 April 21, Victor Riesel, “Inside labor”, in The Daily Standard, number 44, Sikeston, Mo.: C. L. Blanton, Jr., →OCLC, page 2, column 8:
      And we hear that the construction unions now are bitter over the environmentalists' dragging construction projects into the courts, delaying them for years. "Lawfare" the hard hats call this.
    • 2007 July, Scott Horton, “State of Exception: Bush’s War on the Rule of Law”, in Roger D. Hodge, editor, Harper’s Magazine, volume 315, number 1886, New York, N.Y.: Harper’s Magazine Foundation, →ISSN, →OCLC, pages 74–75:
      Lawfare, as defined by [George Walker] Bush Administration officials, is a terrorist tactic. Yet to anyone trained in English and American jurisprudence, not to mention the thinking that has dominated the Anglo-Saxon legal world at least since 1688, those who are accused of engaging in lawfare are simply exercising well-established legal rights and liberties. Indeed, the lawfare doctrine is the conceptual framework that best reveals the degree to which the Bush Administration has effectively declared war on the rule of law itself.
    • 2015 August, Christopher D. Yung, Patrick McNulty, “An Empirical Analysis of Claimant Tactics in the South China Sea”, in Strategic Forum, number 289, Washington, D.C.: NDU Press for the Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 9, column 2:
      [T]he data suggest that the one area of competition where China does not enjoy an advantage is in the legal sphere. This is surprising given the Chinese emphasis on lawfare and the "Three Warfares" in its strategic literature. The Philippines has been more active in using legal tactics, and China has been in a reactive mode.
    • 2019 March, Kerry K. Gershaneck, “Enhancing Japan–U.S. Military Cooperation to Support the Indo-Pacific Strategy”, in 國防雜誌 = National Defense Journal, volume 34, number 1, Taoyuan, Taiwan: National Defense University, →DOI, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 30:
      The PRC [People's Republic of China]'s version of PW [Political Warfare] is all encompassing. It is Total War that goes beyond traditional Liaison Work (building coalitions in a "United Front" to support the PRC and to "disintegrate" enemies) and the "Three Warfares" (strategic psychological warfare, overt and covert media manipulation, and the use of "Lawfare") to include use of violence and other forms of destructive attacks.
    • 2020 June 18, Lisa Cox, quoting Sussan Ley, “Claims major projects are being delayed by environmental ‘lawfare’ dismissed in new research”, in Katharine Viner, editor, The Guardian‎[1], London: Guardian News & Media, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2022-05-10:
      Earlier this year the [Australian] environment minister, Sussan Ley, said the "lawfare that is such a part of today's environmental landscape can be crippling to ­business as well as to environmental organisations". […] GreenLaw found […] strong evidence that public interest litigants are not abusing court processes to disrupt and delay proponents.
    • 2024 August 23, Max Walden, “China’s Uyghur Policies a ‘Racialised Atrocity Crime’, Harvard Law Scholar Finds”, in ABC News‎[2], Sydney, N.S.W.: Australian Broadcasting Corporation, archived from the original on 2024-08-30:
      International scrutiny had driven Chinese authorities away from extrajudicial detention towards forms of "lawfare" and weaponising criminal prosecutions, Ms [Rayhan] Asat said.

Translations

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See also

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References

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  1. ^ “lawfare, n.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
  2. ^ “lawfare, n.”, in Collins English Dictionary.

Further reading

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