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The continuous Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territory may well have exhausted the international community and exasperated the Palestinians, but it still stimulates the Israeli legal imagination. In 2012, the Israeli government established an expert committee to examine the status of Jewish construction in the West Bank. The committee's report concluded that from an international legal perspective, the West Bank is not occupied territory; the law of belligerent occupation is not applicable to the area; the "prevailing view" is that Jewish settlements are lawful; and that Israel has a valid claim to sovereignty over the territory. The article, combining a doctrinal analysis with both Cover's notion of 'Nomos and Narrative' and Kuhn's 'Structure of Scientific Revolutions,' posits that the report is epistemologically groundless and ethically blemished. The committee's reading of international law substitutes an ideology for professionalism. The ideology, resurrecting the long discredited colonialist/Orientalist paradigm, reflects an idiosyncratic utopian vision, one that is simultaneously hegemonic and insular. Consequently, its legal position is methodologically extraneous to the structure of international law, substantively at odds with the compelling commitment of the international community to self-determination, and ethically dystopian.

The mass media, personal smartphone and social media facilities and legal and litigation fora, taken together, create the spotlight under which modern warfare is frequently fought and that spotlight is the focus of Chap. 11. After explaining the current law as it applies, respectively, to war correspondents and to journalists, the chapter looks at the diverse media, at attempts to control it and assesses the implications of human rights law norms. Noting the potential strategic impact of news media and private reporting of events, new trends are identified. Legal processes contribute to the spotlight, and the chapter reviews in this regard Coroners’ courts, inquiries, criminal courts, judicial review, human rights proceedings and challenges at the political level and proceedings before international courts and tribunals. The strategically important implications of ‘lawfare in the digital age’ are then assessed, and an attempt is made to draw some conclusions.

Klein opines on the Australian government's proposal to strip environmental groups of their right to challenge its decisions. Environment minister Josh Frydenberg indicated that his party would seek to modify the law so that only people with a "direct interest"--local farmers and landowners--would have the right to challenge new resource projects. The aim is to clamp down on what the government calls "vigilante litigation" or "green lawfare." In the climate change era, it's more important than ever that environmental organizations have regal rights that allow them to hold their governments to account. It's also reasonable for them to play an active part in doing the same with other governments. If Australia goes ahead with its plan to gag green groups that stand in the way of new coal mines, it will set a dangerous precedent for the rest of the world.

its first fluores- cence, that literature evinced a rather crude topos. Its primary concern was to demonstrate the importance of legalities, broadly defined, in the imposi- tion of control by Europe over its various “others”: how law was “the cutting edge of colonialism, an instrument of the power of an alien state and part of the process of coercion” (Chanock

1. Introduction. The Other Spaces of War: War beyond the Battlefield in the War on Terror David Grondin 2. Liberal Lawfare and Biopolitics: US Juridical Warfare in the War on Terror John Morrissey 3. "A Day in the Life": A Tomogram of Global Governmentality in Relation to the "War on Terror" on November 20th, 2003 Miguel de Larrinaga 4. Los Alamos as Laboratory for Domestic Security Measures: Nuclear Age Battlefield Transformations and the Ongoing Permutations of Security Jeffrey Bussolini 5. The Geographical Imaginations of Video Games: Diplomacy, Civilization, America's Army and Grand Theft Auto IV Mark Salter 6. 'Theatres of War': Visual Technologies and Identities in the Iraq Wars Benjamin Muller and John Measor 8. "Those About to Die Salute You": Sacrifice, the War in Iraq and the Crisis of the American Imperial Society Florian Olsen 9. Grieving Dead Soldiers, Disavowing Loss: Cindy Sheehan and the Im/possibility of the American Antiwar Movement Tina Managhan

Lawfare is a recently coined term which in its broadest sense refers to the involvement of legal process in modern day warfare. Lawfare can range from litigation in federal or international courts to the exploitation of U.S. Rules of Engagement. It also can be defined as using or misusing law as a substitute for traditional military means to achieve a strategic or operational military objective. This paper examined specific legal cases in which the misuse of legal process was alleged, including accusations that detainees were instructed by Al Qaeda trainers to bring false claims of torture to influence public opinion against the United States and drain resources through protracted litigation. Supreme Court decisions were examined with an eye toward any deleterious effects on military operations. I have concluded that litigation lawfare is largely a myth, and that cases decided by the Supreme Court provided a much needed check on executive authority. The threat of lawfare was overstated and was adequately handled by our judicial system.

This essay seeks to analyze the recent reconfigurations of French nationalism, taking as an entry point the legal treatment of veiled Muslim women and prostitutes over the past two decades. We argue that the bodies of prostitutes and veiled Muslim women, both of which have been targeted by successive legal interventions in order to exclude them from the public space, have become central political sites for the state to assert its sovereign power and trigger nationalist feelings. This comparative analysis of gendered “lawfare“ (which John Comaroff has defined as the judicialization of politics and the resort to legal instruments to commit acts of political coercion) provides insights into a new form of nationalism that strives to foster “sexual liberalism“ as a core value of citizenship in order to enforce a virile nationalism, prescribe new sexual normativities, and criminalize immigrants and those living at the social margins.

“Surgical warfare” is the term used by the Obama administration to justify the use of drones in the war against terrorism. This decision inevitably raises concerns for internationalists, given that such a doctrine recommends the use of force — which all international law attempts to rule out of international relations. It is not sufficient to note this behavior; it must be properly apprehended in order to establish the conditions under which it is permissible and the consequences arising from any breach of these conditions. Such an undertaking is all the more important given the ever-increasing number of UAVs and UGVs on the battlefield — in 2008, there were over 12,000 in Iraq — and the ever-increasing number of States with this kind of technology, indeed there are around forty, plus a certain number of Non-State armed groups. As in the case of new players in armed conflicts, lawyers are confronted with new issues with regard to UGVs and UAVs. I will take a broader approach and attempt to determine under which body of law these new combat resources can be apprehended, in the light of international law.This question is not merely a theoretical one; it is of particular interest because the law may be taken either as a weapon or as a limiting factor. The law can be deemed to be used as a “weapon” if it is used to achieve military objectives. Americans use the term “lawfare” to designate this strategy, which may be defined as a strategy of use or misuse of the law as a substitute for conventional military resources in order to achieve an operational objective or prevent the enemy from achieving its objective. This weapon may be used to support or criticize an operation; its objective is to gain the moral high ground over an enemy in public opinion. In this perspective, better understanding of the applicable rules will enable optimum use of these new combat resources.

The strategic values of the South China Sea had long been recognized. More recently, the South China Sea has once again become an international flashpoint, as disputes take place in the context of a rising and perceived more assertive People’s Republic of China (China) vis-à-vis a relatively declining US that seeks to retain its influence and interests in East Asia. This paper tries to illustrate the growing strategic role of international law in the geopolitics of the South China Sea at play — a subject matter that has so far been less explored — and to assess how the intensified legal maneuvers, or “lawfare” between China on the one hand, and other South China Sea claimants as well as the US on the other, reflect China’s attitude toward the South China Sea dispute and may impact upon the peace and security in the region. It concludes that the “lawfare” since 2009, especially the South China Sea arbitration proceedings initiated by the Philippines, may have not only increased the uncertainties of China’s behavior and China–US relations, but also made the situations in both East and South China seas more complicated. Moreover, China’s responses in the “lawfare” also suggest that China has become more “rule-of-law oriented” as well as hegemonic. The dual images of China raise some uncertainty as to how the South China Sea disputes might eventually be resolved.

Modern law and modern war: Warfare has always been a central preoccupation and presented a kind of ultimate test for international law. It is hard to think of international law governing the relations amongst states without having something to say about war – when war is and is not an appropriate exercise of sovereign authority, how war can and cannot be conducted, which of war’s outcomes will and will not become components of a post-war status quo, and so on. It is conventional to imagine that international law restrains war by making distinctions: this is war, and this is not; this is sovereignty, and this is not; this is legal warfare, and this is not. The terms with which these legal distinctions are drawn change over time. The vernacular may be more or less sodden with ethical considerations, more or less rooted in the specific treaty arrangements entered into by states. The distinctions may be drawn more or less sharply, may be matters of kind or degree. What goes on one or the other side of these distinctions may change, but the idea that law is about distinguishing war from peace, sovereign right from sovereign whim, legal from illegal conduct, on the battlefield and off, endures. Discussions about international law and war usually unfold as if the participants were imagining an international law which would be able to substitute itself for sovereign power in a top-down fashion, first to distinguish legal from illegal violence and then, perhaps not today but eventually, or perhaps not directly but indirectly, to bring that distinction to bear in the life of sovereigns, extinguishing sovereign authority for war at the point it crosses a legal limit. The idea is that the articulation of right will discipline, limit and restrain sovereign power when it turns to violence. International law proposes to bring this about through a series of doctrines, definitions and arguments which say where war begins and ends, and then through an apparatus of institutions and relationships which are linked in one or another way to these doctrines and which are the locus for or the effect of these sayings.

Since Boumediene, the courts within the D.C. Circuit have heard over sixty habeas petitions from detainees at Guantanamo Bay. At first, many writs were granted. The lower courts applied a functional framework for determining the admissibility, credibility, and probity of evidence, holding the government to the ordinary burden of preponderance of the evidence. However, as the government and detainees began to appeal habeas decisions on the basis of adverse evidentiary rulings, the Court of Appeals announced binding evidentiary rules limiting the district courts’ discretion to admit, exclude, weigh, and consider evidence as the district courts saw fit. This Note argues that these evidentiary rules deny detainees a “meaningful opportunity” to contest the factual basis of their detention. The D.C. Circuit maintains that it holds the government to a preponderance standard and has cast its reversals of the District Court’s grants of habeas corpus as mere corrections in judging evidentiary probity. However, in substance, the Court of Appeals’ evidentiary rules have quietly but significantly eroded the evidentiary burden.

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The Texaco oil company has long been accused of creating an environmental and human rights catastrophe while conducting oil operations in the Ecuadorian Amazon over a number of decades to 1990. Plaintiffs from the area, largely Indigenous people, have sought compensation via litigation for nearly twenty years, first against Texaco, then against the merged successor company ChevronTexaco (now known as ‘Chevron’). This article tells the tale (so far) of that litigation, which has wound its way from the United States to Ecuador and back again. The plaintiffs won a US$18 billion judgment in Ecuador in early 2011, though an appeal is pending. Furthermore, related litigation remains ongoing in the US as well as in the Hague in the Netherlands. This story of protracted and ongoing ‘lawfare’ reveals just how difficult it can be to hold major multinational corporations accountable for environmental and human rights harms when those harms have taken place in a weak developing State in a virtual regulatory vacuum.

"Lawfare" is the idea that international law only exists as a strategem; that states only comply with or create international rules as part of their quest for power; that power, not law or morality or even trade dominates international relations; and that states are rational power maximizers. As such, it is a variant within the (failed) IR Realist theory of international law.This article outlines the tenets of "lawfare" placing "lawfare" in the broader historical context. It then places lawfare into the practical contemporary context. It positions lawfare within a spectrum of ideas and movements opposing globalization such as Wikileaks, Al Qaeda, Occupy Wallstreet, and also Neoconservatism. The article concludes that global liberalism ("Empire") will likely meet and triumph over each of these challenges because liberalism is open textured, sustainable, and self-replicating whereas its opponents are conspiratorial, fragmented, disorganized, lack a mass base, and cannot articulate a comprehensive and compelling alternative vision.

This chapter examines how Israeli and Palestinian human rights organizations use international law differently in the course of their advocacy: Palestinian human rights organizations use international law as a form of nonviolent resistance against Israeli occupation, while Israeli human rights organizations focus their efforts on strengthening Israeli democracy by encouraging government accountability to human rights principles, including state adherence to international human rights norms. Both Palestinian and Israeli (and international) human rights and humanitarian organizations have been criticized by some members of the Israeli government and its supporters, however, for this advocacy, with their work seen as a form of anti-Semitism, as “lawfare”1, or as supportive of terrorism.2

This paper is the written transcript of the author’s exchange of views with Martti Koskenniemi and Mudar Kassis on the occasion of a debate organized by the Institute of Law (IoL) of the University of Birzeit. The paper explores the origin of international lawyers’ frustrated expectations when it comes to the role of international law in the Middle East. It more specifically argues that the disenchantment of international lawyers is the upshot of three well-entrenched beliefs. It then elaborates on three attitudes which can help international lawyers make sense of the role of international law in general and, in particular, in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Attention is paid to the place of compliance in studies about international law, the role of legal forms and, eventually, the role of international legal scholars in a conflict like the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The spoken character of the text has been preserved.

Two basic forms of ‘lawfare’ are employed by the United States in its enactment of the war on terror, both of which have a biopolitical focus. The first strategy has been well documented. 1 It involves the indefinite detention and sometimes extraordinary rendition of enemy combatants, legally sanctioned and politically justified by the ‘exceptional’ circumstances of late modern war and terrorist violence. Geography plays a central role in strategy number one: the legal statuses of detainees, whose lives and bodies are cast out and denied basic juridical rights, are bounded, identified and allowed for in extra-territorial spaces throughout the world, from Guantanamo Bay to Bagram Air Force Base. Such exceptional biopolitical spaces are essentially ‘defensive’ and operate at the local scale. On the contrary, the second seldom-discussed legal strategy conditions and protects the US military in ‘offensive’ mode, operates at the national and transnational scale, and involves the careful legal designation and p...

This chapter focuses on the normalization of lawfare, a process whereby war has become less an exception than the rule and, therefore, is as much a strategic operation as a legal one. I chart how the cozy alliance of humanitarians, human rights defenders, and military lawyers could determine and police the limits of concepts of humanity. Through a critical engagement of Samuel Huntington and the war on terror, I focus on how civilizational and cultural discourses can facilitate this policing process, ultimately adjudicating which humans will be granted human rights and which can be killed with impunity.

Drawing on this analysis, the conclusion will flag some pressing threats posed by Israel’s identification of the international legal framework as a battleground of the future. In particular, it will demonstrate that Israel, by seeking to have international humanitarian law adapted so as to exclude its full application to the types of conflict such as those against Hizbollah in 2006 and Hamas in 2008-9, is seeking to promote a narrative closer to the 19th Century colonial narrative from which humanitarian law first emerged. By this reading, Palestinians, by virtue of their statelessness and lack of civilization, are not due the protections offered by international law, for to do so would be to sabotage the western liberal project by extending it to an illegitimate actor from whom one can expect neither reciprocity nor reason.

The use of courts to prosecute violations of human rights has grown exponentially since the 1990s. This growth has coincided with the vast accumulation of power by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the expansion of the concept of “universal jurisdiction.” NGOs claiming to promote human rights (many funded by European governments, the EU, and prominent foundations like the Ford Foundation and George Soros’ Open Society Institute) are engaged in international lobbying as well as filing civil lawsuits or initiating criminal complaints against Israeli officials for alleged “war crimes” or “crimes against humanity” in Belgium, England, Spain, Switzerland, the United States, and elsewhere. These legal actions, ostensibly to provide “justice” to “victims,” are a form of “lawfare” – a “strategy of using or misusing law as a substitute for traditional military means to achieve military objectives” – intended to punish Israel or anti-terror operations, as well as to block future actions. They are also a means for actors that are not accountable to any form of democratic check to subvert a country’s foreign policy and interfere with diplomatic relations. While Israel is not the only country that has been subject to NGO lawfare (several prominent NGOs have filed similar suits against US officials in France and Germany), it is a primary target of these efforts. Though claiming to promote universal human rights, these same NGOs havenot pursued cases against Palestinian, Hezbollah, Syrian, or Iranian officials involved in terror. The strategy to delegitimize Israel using legal frameworks was adopted at the NGO Forum of the 2001 UN World Conference Against Racism held in Durban, South Africa (“WCAR” or “Durban Conference”). The NGO Forum crystallized a plan in which Israel would be singled out as a “racist” and “apartheid” state and isolated internationally through a campaign of boycotts, divestment, and sanctions and explicitly adopted lawfare to advance the political war against Israel.ii The NGO Forum Declaration called for the “adoption of all measures to ensure [the] enforcement” of international humanitarian law, including “the establishment of a war crimes tribunal to investigate and bring to justice those who may be guilty of war crimes, acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing and the crime of Apartheid...perpetrated in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.” This movement is led by Palestinian NGOs such as Al Haq, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), and Badil, and aided by international NGOs including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, International Federation of Human Rights (France), and the Center for Constitutional Rights (New York). These NGOs are largely supported by European governments and receive funding from prominent foundations. This monograph presents a number of case studies analyzing the central role that NGOs have played in the strategy of lawfare, using it to further their political campaign against Israel. The study begins with a discussion of NGO involvement in the movement to promote and expand the concept of universal jurisdiction and thecreation of the International Criminal Court (ICC). Without these legal developments, this NGO strategy would not be possible. Second, the paper will detail anti-Israel lawfare at the international level, examining the crystallization of the tactic at the NGO Forum of the 2001 Durban Conference, alternative strategies adopted by the NGO network in lieu of criminal prosecutions of Israelis at the ICC, and the International Court of Justice case against Israel’s security barrier. As in other politicized NGO campaigns, these activities consistently draw an immoral equivalence between anti-terror operations and mass scale atrocities, minimize or omit the context of terror, exploit international legal terminology and rhetoric, level condemnations without providing proper bases or reliable evidence, and use incomplete, distorted, or inconsistent legal definitions. Third, the monograph discusses NGO-led litigation against Israel in the national courts of Europe and the United States. Because Israel has not ratified its participation in the International Criminal Court (ICC) due to serious political and legal concerns, NGO lawfare has generally been pursued in national courts where “war crimes” statutes or other universal jurisdiction laws have been enacted. The lawsuits detailed in the study include the case against Ariel Sharon in Belgium for his alleged responsibility for the Sabra and Shatila massacres; the arrest warrant issued against Doron Almog in the United Kingdom for alleged “grave breaches” of the Geneva Convention; civil cases in the US against Avi Dichter for his alleged role in the targeted killing of the founder of Hamas’ military wing and against Moshe Ya’alon for his alleged participation in the 1996 IDF operation in Qana, Lebanon; and, finally, cases initiated in the US and the UK intended to block corporate trade with Israel. As a US Court of Appeals observed, these cases seek to engage courts “in the micro-management of military targeting decisions” and are not cases such as those against “an Idi Amin or a Mao Zedong.” Plaintiffs point to cases where “similar high-level decisions on military tactics and strategy during a modern military operation have been held to constitute torture or extrajudicial killing under international law.” While these cases were all dismissed in the preliminary stages, the media coverage was highly damaging, fulfilling one of the NGOs’ central goals. As a result of these cases, several countries, notably Belgium and the UK, have amended their laws to preventfuture abuse. Such amendments have included denyingNGOs the ability to apply to a judge directly for an arrest warrant without consulting any government officials. Yet, these lawsuits continue to have serious political and diplomatic repercussions, including severely limiting the ability of Israeli officials to travel abroad. And the media impact remains an important element in the demonization of Israel. This report also highlights the lack of transparency and accountability of NGOs, and their contribution todiplomatic and political tension, and even greater conflict. Analysts have noted that the “single-issue” focus of many NGOs that claim to promote human rights makes them “less concerned with the balancing of interests required of policy leaders.” NGO officials use lawsuits to promote their personal ideologies and foreign policy goals, and are not accountable to a democratic polity. Instead of engaging in debate and making the difficult choices of nation-states,such as how to weigh sovereignty and security concerns with human rights, these NGOs advance their political agenda regardless of the wider impact of their actions. This self-interested view in the midst of a complex geopolitical environment, such as the Arab-Israeli conflict, entrenches conflict, and paradoxically, leads to a dilution of the universality of human rights.

Coalition-caused civilian casualties present a potentially grave threat to the failure of the U.S.-led counterinsurgency in Afghanistan. Most attempts to mitigate this threat, whether by the military or academics, focus on preventing civilian casualty incidents in the first place. What the literature fails to address, and what the military may struggle with the most, however, is responding to civilian casualty incidents when they do occur. This article attempts to fill this void.I propose that the President create a Task Force on Civilian Protection by executive order. The Task Force would work with the United Nations, the Government of Afghanistan and, for the first time, NGOs, to investigate alleged civilian casualty incidents. Synthesizing this effort in a single entity would solve a variety of problems while signaling the importance that the U.S. places on protecting vulnerable civilians in wartime. Involving NGOs in civilian casualty investigations, once unthinkable, is now both possible and desirable. Multiple developments now enable the military and humanitarian organizations to work together more closely, among them the rise of the lexicon of law (which makes humanitarian and military professionals “co-linguists”) and the advent of lawfare (which encourages the military to adopt a strategy of openness and honesty to counter enemy assertions of legal violations). Both the military and humanitarian organizations could benefit from closer cooperation. The nature of the conflict in Afghanistan makes the case for the Task Force all the more compelling. Ultimate success in Afghanistan may well hinge on gaining the support of the local people. Few acts do as much to damage the trust and support of the local people than civilian casualty incidents. The proposed Task Force, by responding quickly and transparently to civilian casualty incidents, could show the Afghan people that coalition forces care deeply about their safety. In this way, the Task Force would do its part to ensure that civilian casualties - a recurrent and regrettable aspect of war - present less of a threat to the coalition’s success.

Post-September 11 legal events have demonstrated that ideological agendas distort the deliberation required for sound advice about national security. Legal issue entrepreneurs who market a theory without context exalt short-term interests and encourage executive unilateralism. These perils have emerged in a number of recent developments, including the torture memos drafted by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) and the destruction of CIA interrogation tapes. In the post-September 11 legal climate, issue entrepreneurs saw legal constraints as "lawfare" against American interests. The lawfare critics extolled parsimony as a virtue - advancing the lawfare construct to explain as many complex events as possible. However, the lawfare critics failed to recognize that legal constraints can also empower decisionmakers, by checking the executive's tendency to discount reputational and other long-term values. Unfortunately, existing remedies are not a good fit for the problems caused by issue entrepreneurship. Tort litigation, such as the recent suit by Jose Padilla against John Yoo, risks personalizing the problem and neglecting systemic issues. The informal norms approach suggested by a number of OLC alumni, while offering a number of excellent proposals such as citing and distinguishing adverse authority, has not attracted stakeholders across the political spectrum. A structural reform approach that replaces OLC with an adjudicative entity may produce an inquisitorial tribunal that lacks sharp adversarial inputs and loses influence to more pliable players such as White House counsel. To transcend these difficulties, lawyers should turn to a model of dialogic equipoise relying on two values: transparency and tailoring. Dialogic equipoise allows the president to take action that is inconsistent with the most accurate reading of sources of authority. However, action must be both interstitial - with a clear exit strategy - and publicly disclosed. To implement the dialogic equipoise model, the Article recommends a blended approach, including a safe harbor for publicly disclosed legal opinions, consideration of institutional consequences, assertion of the least drastic rationale for executive power, and an ex ante role for Inspectors General and OLC in document preservation. This blended regime can reinforce deliberation when exigencies obscure the teachings of prudence.

The terrorist groups in Colombia have applied Mao's theory of protracted people's war, seeking to use all available means of struggle to achieve their revolutionary goals by counteracting govemment policy. One way that Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), Ejército de Liberacion Nacional (ELN), and illegal paramilitaries confront the nation is the use of 'lawfare' defined as the opposing force's use of the national and intemational judicial systems to achieve victory and legitimacy when they cannot challenge the government militarily. Terrorist groups have skillfully infiltrated the Colombian judicial system, and are utilizing the both nationallegal institutions and the intemational law system against the government. They have received support for their struggle from various agents and organizations within the society that, intentionally or unintentionally, are serving their interests. Los grupos terroristas en Colombia han aplicado la teoría de Mao de la guerra popular prolongada, tratando de utilizar todos los medios disponibles de lucha para lograr sus objetivos revolucionarios de contrarrestar la política de gobiemo. Una manera en que Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), el Ejército de la Liberación Nacional (ELN) y grupos paramilitares ilegales confrontan a la nación es el uso de la "guerra jurídica" que se define como el uso por parte de fuerzas de oposición de sistemas judiciales nacionales e intemacionales, para lograr la victoria y ganar legitimidad, por cuanto no pueden enfrentar militarmente al gobierno. Los grupos terroristas se han infiltrado hábilmente en el sistema judicial colombiano, y están haciendo uso tanto de instituciones legales nationales como del sistema de derecho intemacional, para ir en contra del gobierno. Han recibido apoyo para su lucha de distintos agentes y organizaciones al interior de la sociedad que intencionalmente o no, están sirviendo a sus intereses. En el presente artículo, donde se presenta una comprensión holística de esta compleja situación que actualmente tiene lugar en Colombia, se muestra cómo las FARC y el ELN están utilizando la guerra jurídica en el contexto de la guerra popular prolongada, como una herramienta para desafiar al gobierno, y ofrece un punto de partida para examinar altern ativas de solución que permitan frenar la capacidad de los grupos terroristas de utilizar el sistema judicial para el logro de sus objetivos políticos. Les groupes terroristes en Colombie ont appliqué la théorie de Mao de la guerre populaire prolongée, cherchant à utiliser tous les moyens disponibles de lutte pour atteindre leurs objectifs révolutionnaires pour affronter la politique gouvernementale. C'est une façon comme les Forces armées révolutionnaires de Colombie (FARC), l'armée de libération nationale ELN, et les groupes paramilitaires illégaux confrontent la nation. Bien qu'ils utilisent comme forme principale la «guerre juridique», qui est définie comme l'usage abusif des systèmes judiciaires nationaux et intemationaux par les forces opposées pour remporter la victoire et s'assurer une légitimité, lorsqu'ils ne peuvent pas rivaliser militairement avec les forces de l'État. Les groupes terroristes parviennent à s›infiltrer habilement dans le système judiciaire colombien, et ils ont également la possibilité d›utiliser un certain nombre d›institutions du système juridique, dans l›ordre interne comme dans l›ordre international, pour s›opposer au gouvernement. Dans leur lutte, ils ont eu le soutien de divers agents et organisations au sein de la société qui, intentionnellement ou non intentionnellement servent leurs intérêts propres. Cet article, que présente une compréhension holistique de cette situation complexe qui se passe actuellement en Colombie, montre comment les FARC et l'ELN appellent le lawfare, ce «guerre juridique» qu'ils utilisent dans le contexte de la guerre populaire prolongée de Mao comme une méthode pour défier le gouvernement. L'article fournit aussi un point de départ pour examiner des solutions alternatives qui réduirait la capacité des groupes terroristes d'utiliser le droit comme arme de guerre pour atteindre leurs objectifs politiques. Os grupos terroristas na Colômbia têm aplicado a teoria de Mao da guerra popular prolongada, tentando usar todos os meios de luta para conseguir seus objetivos revolucionários a fim de combater a política do Governo. Uma maneira que as Forças Armadas Revolucionárias da Colômbia (FARC), o Exército de Libertação Nacional (ELN) e os grupos paramilitares ilegais utilizam para enfrentar a nação é o uso de "guerra jurídica". Esta é definida como o uso da força de oposição dos sistemas judiciais nacionais e intemacionais, para conseguir a vitória e ganhar legitimidade, pois eles não podem enfrentar militarmente o governo. Os grupos terroristas infiltraram-se habilmente no sistema judiciário colombiano, e agora estão fazendo uso dessas instituições nacionais legais e também do sistema de Direito Internacional para ir contra o governo. Esses grupos receberam apoio de diferentes organizações e agentes de dentro da sociedade para suas lutas que, intencionalmente ou não, servem aos seus interesses. Este trabalho, apresenta uma compreensão holística dessa situação complexa, em curso na Colômbia, e mostra como as FARC e o ELN estão usando a guerra jurídica no contexto da guerra popular prolongada como uma ferramenta para desafiar o governo. Fornece também um ponto de partida para examinar soluções alternativas que reduzam a capacidade desses grupos terroristas de usar o sistema judiciário para alcançar seus objetivos políticos.

While civilian supremacy over the armed forces is accepted as a matter of faith in Western countries, this supremacy often means little more than supremacy of the executive branch of government over top generals. Indeed, efforts to regulate armed forces through broader domestic or international legal frameworks, including international criminal law, have been resisted in some military quarters (particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States) with the military and its backers raising concerns of “legal encirclement” or “lawfare.” The author argues for broad civilian and democratic oversight of armed forces, including through increased judicial and quasi-judicial scrutiny of overseas military actions at the domestic and international levels. The author concludes that broad democratic oversight not only promotes compliance with international legal norms but supports operational effectiveness as well.

The fight against terrorism must rest on law. Although most actions can be prosecuted under national law, these are often based on principles of international law. Not only are formal multilateral agreements (treaties) important, but so are regional and bilateral ones. However, these lead to challenges and issues in fighting terrorism. The lack of a comprehensive mechanism is just but one. However, by focusing on the basics, counterterrorism forces can be successful and while conforming to the rule of law.