Lawfare in Comparative Context

For some time, the term “lawfare” has spread throughout the domestic political-legal discourse, jurisprudence, and scholarship of countries and political systems in Latin America, notably–but by no means exclusively–Brazil and Argentina. It has been invoked, in various senses and for various purposes, elsewhere around the world, including recently in connection with the criminal investigations and prosecutions involving Donald Trump and his associates.

This event brings together an international and interdisciplinary panel of commentators to investigate domestic lawfare and its rhetoric from a wide range of perspectives across a number of national, regional, and systemic contexts. Is there such a thing (or things) as Lawfare? If not, is there at least a common core shared by a number of disparate concepts, phenomena, and political or rhetorical tools? Where does lawfare come from? Is it a new phenomenon or as old as law (and war) itself? What has it been used for, and by whom, and how? How does “lawfare” relate to other, possibly related or adjacent, concepts or labels, such as “rule of law,” “fake news,” “enemy criminal law,” “war on crime,” “war on terror,” “police state,” “wehrhafte Demokratie,” or–more prosaically–“cause lawyering”? In the end, is lawfare a fruitful topic of thought and study, and international and interdisciplinary reflection in particular? Does it have normative bite? Analytical power? Can it shed more light than heat?

The event proceedings will appear in a special online MCLR+ forum later this year. Supplemental resources on domestic lawfare are available on the MCLR+ website [MCLR+Resources "Lawfare": https://crimlrev.net/mclr-resources-2/] ​

► To stay informed about upcoming MCLR+ events, publications, and projects, please sign up for the MCLR+ mailing list and check the MCLR+ website [https://crimlrev.net]; to receive notifications about new video content, subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Gautam Bhatia 1:39:43 Lawyer, Scholar & Author, Delhi, India

Manuel Cancio Meliá 1:11:38 Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain, Law

Stephanie Dennison 38:41 University of Leeds, UK, Brazilian Studies

Siri Gloppen 27:41 University of Bergen, Norway, Government

Mark Friis Hau 17:21 University of Copenhagen, Denmark, Sociology

Rocío Lorca Ferreccio 1:27:08 University of Chile, Santiago, Law

Tyler McBrien 1:53:22 Managing Editor, Lawfare, US

Valeria Vegh Weis 03:27 University of Buenos Aires, Argentina/University of Konstanz, Germany, Law/Criminology