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. (For background, see Valeria Vegh Weis, What Does Lawfare Mean in Latin America?, Jaume Castan Pinos & Mark Friis Hau, Lawfare: New Trajectories in Law (excerpt) & José Luis Martí, Lawfare and Democracy. Additional supplemental materials are available at MCLR+ Resources “Lawfare.”)
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. [In the meantime, the event is now available in video and audio format.]
June 13, 2024 @ 2pm (GMT)
► To join us for this free online event, please register here. Registration is encouraged, but not required; if you prefer to join the event directly, head over to the MCLR+ YouTube channel at the time of the event (please note the time zone). All attendees will have the opportunity to post questions and comments via YouTube live chat.
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Gautam Bhatia
Lawyer, Scholar & Author, Delhi, India
Manuel Cancio Meliá
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain, Law
Stephanie Dennison
University of Leeds, UK, Brazilian Studies
Siri Gloppen
University of Bergen, Norway, Government
Mark Friis Hau
University of Copenhagen, Denmark, Sociology
Rocío Lorca Ferreccio
University of Chile, Santiago, Law
Tyler McBrien
Managing Editor, Lawfare, US
Valeria Vegh Weis
University of Buenos Aires, Argentina/University of Konstanz, Germany, Law/Criminology