Lawfare - Other Examples of Lawfare

Other Examples of Lawfare

The Wall Street Journal said in an editorial, regarding the Padilla case, that "the lawyers suing for Padilla aren't interested in justice. They're practicing 'lawfare,' which is an effort to undermine the war on terror by making U.S. officials afraid to pursue it for fear of personal liability." Padilla was arrested in 2002 for planning to carry out a terror attack within the United States, was convicted and sentenced to prison, but has continued his legal battle via the ACLU and the National Litigation Project at Yale Law School, and his case has been ruled on numerous times.

A notable US official cited in connection with asserted lawfare is Henry Kissinger. Dr. Kissinger faced questioning and possible prosecution in France, again in Brazil, and then in England (the latter initiated by Spanish magistrate Baltasar Garzón) because of Kissinger's involvement as a Nixon Administration official with Operation Condor. Kissinger subsequently opined that universal jurisdiction risks "substituting the tyranny of judges for that of governments."

Harvard Law Professor Jack Goldsmith, known for his scholarship voicing opposition to the expansion of international human rights and universal jurisdiction, reveals in his book The Terror Presidency that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was concerned with the possibility of lawfare waged against Bush administration officials, and that Rumsfeld "could expect to be on top of the list." Rumsfeld addresses the effects of lawfare in his memoir Known and Unknown.

Questions remain unresolved of the possibility of lawfare-type prosecution in Italy and Germany of CIA agents involved in international abduction known as extraordinary rendition by the United States, and in Spain before Magistrate Garzón of the Bush 6, American attorneys who created what the New York Times called "the legal framework to justify the torture of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.".

An opinion piece in the New York Daily News asserts that the United States is already dealing with "a variety of lawfare stratagems." In New York, anyone who reports an event as part of the "If You See Something, Say Something™" public awareness campaign is "protected from frivolous lawsuits" by the "Freedom to Report Terrorism Act," and journalists and authors who report on terrorism are protected from lawsuits by the "Libel Terrorism Protection Act," as well.