Towards a War of Norms ? From Lawfare to Legal Operations
Defined as the use of law to establish, perpetuate, or change power relations in order to counter an adversary, lawfare practices reflect a reality that is inherent in international law.
Resulting from compromises between states, international law expresses political-strategic power relations that lawfare seeks to manipulate in four main ways:
- adjusting legal constraints by reinterpreting existing norms
- establishing new norms through legal lobbying as a power strategy
- mobilizing legal effects to coerce an actor through strategic litigation
- using law as a reputational weapon
Although lawfare is controversial when understood as a misuse of the rule of law, it is now being institutionalized. While states do not claim direct responsibility for acts of lawfare, the increasing use of legal vectors to achieve political-strategic ends is a notable feature of the disruptions at work in the international system. States have always used the law for strategic purposes, but recent developments—the proliferation of courts of justice, the increasing media coverage of conflicts, and the growing confusion between legality and legitimacy—tend to favor a greater instrumentalization of the law.
This content is available in French: Vers une guerre des normes ? Du lawfare aux opérations juridiques.
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Towards a War of Norms ? From Lawfare to Legal Operations
Amélie FÉREY
Former Research Fellow, Former Head of the Defense Research Unit, Security Studies Center, Ifri
Security Studies Center
Heir to a tradition dating back to the founding of Ifri, the Security Studies Center provides public and private decision-makers as well as the general public with the keys to understanding power relations and contemporary modes of conflict as well as those to come. Through its positioning at the juncture of politics and operations, the credibility of its civil-military team and the wide distribution of its publications in French and English, the Center for Security Studies constitutes in the French landscape of think tanks a unique center of research and influence on the national and international defense debate.
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