Scope

Lawfare is a neologism created by the agglutination of the words “law” and “warfare” . In Brazil, the term echoed in several analyzes on specific events, especially the foreign attack on the giant pre-salt oil and gas reserves announced by Petrobras, the impeachment process of President Dilma Roussef (August 2016), and the arrest of former President Luís Inácio Lula da Silva (April 2018). Lula was sued on charges of corruption in spite of lacking of evidence in the Operation Lavajato. Meanwhile a battle against mas media disinformation, the lawyers Cristiano Zanin Martins, Valeska Teixeira Zanin Martins and Rafael Valim(1) gave the term “lawfare” a political meaning that translates into “the use of the inherent power of the law to achieve political and electoral results, through of legal maneuvers, under the guise of legality, to pursue and eliminate the opponent of the electoral race, replacing the sovereign will of the people, which should be legitimately manifested only by the ballot box”. 

The term “lawfare” was coined by Carlson & Yeomans (2), as a peace tactic, expressing the good use of the law, through the judicial demand in which swords would give way to words. But shortly thereafter, an American general used the term as an instrument of war against the Human Rights Courts to defend the interests of Yankee imperialism. Thus, Lawfare started to express what today means, the misuse of the law to replace traditional military means to achieve an operational objective (3). South African legal anthropologists Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff (4), researchers at Harvard University, established the strategic dimensions of Lawfare as a legal war unleashed by representatives of the colonialist state against the weaker target, aimed at defending the interests of the colonizer.

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(1) ZANIN MARTINS, Cristiano; ZANIN MARTINS, Valeska Teixeira; VALIM, Rafael. Lawfare: uma introdução. São Paulo: Contracorrente, 2019a. 150p.
(2) CARLSON, John; YEOMANS, Neville. The Way Out: Radical alternatives in Australia. Melbourne: Lansdowne Press, 1975. 
(3) DUNLAP JR, Charles J. Law and Military Interventions: Preserving Humanitarian Values in 21st Conflicts. In: Humanitarian Challenges in Military Intervention Conference. Washington, D.C.: Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, November 29, 2001. 
(4) COMAROFF, Jean; COMAROFF, John L. (Eds.). Law and Disorder in the Postcolony. Chicago, London: University of Chicago Press, 2006. 349 p.