The Origins of “Lawfare” and the Exploitation of Public International Law

Abstract

This paper offers a transdisciplinary analysis of the abuse of public international law for geopolitical objectives, providing an analysis of the term lawfare, the only previously accepted term to describe this behavior. It concludes that the definition lawfare is inadequate for professional scholarly or policy-focused discourse and offers the notion of Malign Legal Operations (MALOPs) as a more appropriate term to encapsulate these actions. Furthermore, this paper emphasizes that the debate over the value-neutrality of the notion lawfare is complex, and the term is insufficiently defined to support its supposed neutrality, leading to opportunities for further exploitation by revisionist states and entities. Supporters of valueneutrality argue that distinguishing a “malign” variant of lawfare offers malicious practitioners more opportunities to make false claims against legitimate actors. However, the text counters that classification of malign behavior is based on objective and observable manipulations of legal systems rather than mere disagreement. Furthermore, the paper argues that lawfare is a doctrinally inappropriate term due to its contradictory nature, as it combines “law” and “warfare” despite serving as an alternative to military conflict. Using a single term to describe both legitimate and malicious legal actions is damaging to discourse and detracts from efforts to combat the misuse of legal systems. The research’s primary objectives include establishing the lack of a universally accepted definition for lawfare, demonstrating the unanswered question of value-neutrality, and highlighting the non-doctrinal nature of the term itself. It concludes that lawfare is no longer an appropriate term to describe these phenomena, advocating for the adoption of Malign Legal Operations to better represent the manipulation of legal domains for political ends.