Lawfare is the strategic use of legal proceedings to achieve what a party might otherwise pursue through force, politics, or market power. The lawfare definition most commonly cited blends “law” and “warfare” to describe lawsuits, complaints, investigations, and international legal claims filed less to win on the merits than to weaken an opponent, drain their resources, or damage their reputation. The tactic shows up at every scale, from a defamation suit filed against a single online critic to a nation hauling a rival before an international tribunal.
Where the Term Came From
Major General Charles Dunlap, a retired U.S. Air Force Judge Advocate, gave the word its modern meaning in a 2001 paper written for Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. He defined lawfare as “the strategy of using—or misusing—law as a substitute for traditional military means to achieve a warfighting objective.”1Air University. Legitimizing and Operationalizing US Lawfare Dunlap wanted military and civilian audiences to understand how adversaries unable to match American military technology were turning to courts, treaty bodies, and legal claims as an alternative battlefield.2Army University Press. Military Review – Lawfare 101
The underlying idea is older than the word. Rulers have long used legal instruments to justify interventions, seize property, or delegitimize rivals. What Dunlap captured was the deliberate shift toward treating law as the primary theater of engagement rather than the backdrop to it. Since 2001, the term has spread well past the military context and now describes any situation where legal proceedings function as a weapon rather than a path to justice.
What Lawfare Looks Like in Practice
SLAPP Suits
Strategic lawsuits against public participation are the most recognizable form of lawfare directed at individuals. A SLAPP suit is filed not to win but to bury a critic under legal costs. The real objective is to silence public commentary by forcing the target to hire lawyers, attend hearings, and spend months or years defending a case the filer never expected to prevail on.3Cornell Law School. SLAPP Suit The financial pressure alone often accomplishes what the legal arguments cannot. A well-funded plaintiff can file a defamation or tortious interference claim knowing the defendant will settle or go quiet rather than spend six figures fighting it.
Forum Shopping
Forum shopping means filing in the court or jurisdiction most likely to produce a favorable outcome, whether through friendlier precedent, looser procedural rules, or a location that forces the defendant to travel across the country to appear.4Cornell Law School. Forum Shopping As a lawfare tactic, the point is not just a better legal result but the maximum logistical and financial burden on the other side. Courts can push back through forum non conveniens, which lets a judge dismiss a case filed in an unreasonably inconvenient location, but challenging jurisdiction itself takes time and money the defendant may not have.
Discovery and Motion Attrition
Discovery is the phase where both sides exchange documents, answer written questions, and sit for depositions. In lawfare, it becomes a weapon of attrition. Sweeping discovery requests force the target to review thousands of documents, hire additional attorneys, and devote staff time to compliance. Attorney fees for civil litigation commonly fall between $350 and $430 per hour, so a party that files ten unnecessary depositions can burn through an opponent’s budget before the case reaches any substantive ruling.
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26 includes proportionality requirements meant to rein this in. Judges weigh factors like the amount in controversy, each side’s resources, and whether the burden of the requested discovery outweighs its benefit. But asserting proportionality means filing motions, briefing the issue, and attending hearings, all of which cost money. The aggressor knows this. Filing excessive motions on every procedural question creates the same dynamic: each motion forces the other side to respond, and each response has a price tag.
Frivolous Filings
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11 requires every pleading or motion to have a legitimate legal basis. When an attorney signs a filing, they certify it is not being presented for an improper purpose such as harassment or delay, and that its legal arguments are not frivolous. Judges who find a violation can impose sanctions, including monetary penalties or orders directing payment of the other side’s attorney fees.5Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 11 Sanctions are calibrated to whatever is sufficient to deter the conduct, which in practice can range from a modest fine to orders covering hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Separately, 28 U.S.C. § 1927 holds attorneys personally liable when they unreasonably multiply proceedings in a case, requiring them to pay the excess costs, expenses, and attorney fees their conduct caused.6Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 U.S.C. § 1927 That is a sharper tool because it targets the lawyer’s own wallet rather than the client’s. Even so, proving conduct was “unreasonable and vexatious” is a high bar, and many instances of lawfare stay just below the line.
Lawfare Between Countries
Countries and non-state actors use international legal bodies the same way individuals use domestic courts: to gain advantages they cannot win through diplomacy or force alone. The International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice, and United Nations bodies all become arenas where legal maneuvering substitutes for or supplements traditional power plays. Treaties like the Geneva Conventions provide detailed rules on the conduct of armed conflict, and parties use those rules to accuse adversaries of war crimes or non-compliance, which can trigger investigations, sanctions, or diplomatic isolation.7Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War
Abuse of Interpol Red Notices
Interpol Red Notices, which ask law enforcement worldwide to locate and provisionally arrest a person pending extradition, have become a specific lawfare vector. Investigations have identified at least 17 countries that have used the system to pursue political dissidents, opposition leaders, and critics rather than genuine fugitives. Examples include China targeting Uighur political figures who held refugee status in Europe, Russia pursuing business associates of political opponents, and Iran seeking the arrest of dissidents living as refugees in Scandinavia.
Targeted individuals can challenge a notice through the Commission for the Control of Interpol’s Files, an independent body that reviews notices free of charge.8INTERPOL. Red Notices Interpol’s own rules prohibit notices for offenses rooted in political, religious, or cultural disputes, and a specialized task force reviews notices for compliance. But the process is slow, and in the meantime the target can be detained at border crossings, denied banking services, or effectively trapped in a single country.
Lawfare in Domestic Politics
Within the United States, the legal system regularly becomes a theater for political competition. Investigations, indictments, and civil suits targeting political figures are often timed around election cycles, creating maximum distraction when a candidate most needs to be campaigning. Whether a particular prosecution represents legitimate accountability or strategic weaponization is almost always contested, and that ambiguity is part of what makes political lawfare so effective.
Campaign finance complaints filed with the Federal Election Commission show the tactic clearly. Any person can file a complaint, and the FEC must notify the respondent within five days and give them 15 days to respond.9Federal Election Commission. How to File a Complaint with the FEC The FEC has no mandatory deadline for resolving the investigation, and all enforcement matters stay confidential until resolved. A candidate can spend months or years under a cloud of investigation they cannot publicly address in detail. The complaint itself becomes the weapon regardless of whether it ever produces a finding.
Criminal indictments carry even heavier weight. Federal sentencing guidelines scale from probation at the lowest offense levels to life imprisonment at the highest, and federal courts have broad discretion within those ranges.10United States Sentencing Commission. Annotated 2025 Chapter 5 Even when charges never result in conviction, the legal costs, media coverage, and reputational damage can reshape an election. The process is the punishment, as defense lawyers often put it.
When Aggressive Lawyering Becomes Lawfare
Lawyers are not free agents. The American Bar Association’s Model Rule 3.1 prohibits attorneys from bringing or defending a case unless there is a non-frivolous basis in law and fact. The rule allows good-faith arguments for changing existing law, so creative legal theories are permitted, but a filing designed purely to harass or drain an opponent’s resources violates the standard.11American Bar Association. Rule 3.1 Meritorious Claims and Contentions Criminal defense attorneys get broader leeway and can require the prosecution to prove every element of its case even without an affirmative factual defense.
Enforcement is where the gap sits. State bar disciplinary proceedings move slowly, sanctions are rare for borderline conduct, and the line between aggressive advocacy and frivolous litigation is genuinely hard to draw. An attorney who files a weak claim supported by a plausible-but-unlikely legal theory is probably not violating Rule 3.1, even when everyone involved knows the real purpose is to impose costs. Lawfare thrives in that gray zone between what ethics rules prohibit on paper and what can actually be proven and punished.
Pushing Back
Anti-SLAPP Statutes
The most direct legislative response is the anti-SLAPP statute. As of early 2026, 39 states have enacted anti-SLAPP laws, though there is no federal equivalent and proposed federal legislation has stalled in the House. State statutes let defendants file an early motion to dismiss when a lawsuit targets speech on a matter of public concern. In states with strong protections, filing the motion triggers an automatic stay of discovery, so the plaintiff cannot force the defendant to produce documents or sit for depositions while the motion is pending.3Cornell Law School. SLAPP Suit That stay shuts down the most expensive phase of litigation before it starts. If the motion succeeds, many states require the plaintiff to pay the defendant’s attorney fees, which creates a real financial deterrent against meritless filings.
Malicious Prosecution
When lawfare crosses from aggressive to abusive, the target may be able to sue back. A malicious prosecution claim requires showing that the original case was brought without probable cause, that it ended in the defendant’s favor, that the person who initiated it acted with malice or an improper purpose, and that the defendant suffered real harm. Elements vary somewhat across jurisdictions, but the core structure is consistent: the earlier lawsuit must be shown to have been baseless and known to be baseless. Because the underlying case must have already concluded in the defendant’s favor, these claims cannot serve as a real-time defense.
Abuse of Process
Abuse of process is a related but distinct claim. It does not require showing that the original case lacked merit. Instead, the target must prove that legitimate legal procedures were used for an improper purpose unrelated to the lawsuit’s stated goals.12Legal Information Institute. Abuse of Process The classic example is using discovery to extract confidential business information that has nothing to do with the dispute. Some jurisdictions also require proof of concrete harm, such as property seizure or economic loss. Attorneys who participate in the abuse can be held personally liable alongside their clients.
Why the Label Itself Is Contested
Not everyone treats “lawfare” as a neutral or useful concept. Critics argue the label is frequently deployed to delegitimize valid legal claims. When a powerful defendant calls a lawsuit “lawfare,” they may be reframing a legitimate exercise of legal rights as an act of aggression. A human rights organization bringing a war crimes case before the ICC fits Dunlap’s definition, but calling it lawfare implies the challenge is somehow improper rather than exactly what international law was built to do.
The term also carries an implicit assumption that only the weaker or more aggressive party engages in it. In practice, governments and large corporations use the same tactics. A company that buries an individual plaintiff in discovery requests and procedural motions is engaging in lawfare just as much as any activist filing strategic complaints. The framing tends to favor whoever gets to apply the label first, which is usually the party with the bigger public platform. Whether a legal action counts as lawfare or legitimate accountability often depends on which side of the courtroom you are sitting on.