Lawfare and the juridification of late modern war

Jones, Craig

doi:10.1177/0309132515572270

Cited by 46 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…Recognizing here that some would argue that law is itself a site of contested, rather than objective, meaning(Gunneflo, 2016;Hurd, 2017;Jones, 2016;Kelly, 2012;Stampnitzky, 2016) …”

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confidence: 99%

Truth and consequences? Reconceptualizing the politics of exposure

Stampnitzky

2020

Security Dialogue

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Secrecy, especially state secrecy, has taken on increasing interest for scholars of international relations and security studies. However, even with interest in secrecy on the rise, there has been little explicit attention paid to exposure. The breaking of secrecy has generally been relegated to the role of a mere ‘switch’, whose internal workings and variations are of little consequence. This article argues that exposure is a significant process in its own right, and introduces a new conceptualization of exposure as a socially and politically constructed process, one that must be ‘thickly described’ if we are to understand how it occurs and has effects. I differentiate the process of exposure into two distinct aspects, reserving the concept of exposure to refer to releases of information, while introducing the concept of revelation to refer to a collective recognition that something has been exposed. The first part of the article explores existing understandings of secrecy and exposure to demonstrate why a new framework is needed, while the second part applies this framework to a case study of the exposure of the use of torture in the post-9/11 US ‘war on terror’.

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“…Recognizing here that some would argue that law is itself a site of contested, rather than objective, meaning(Gunneflo, 2016;Hurd, 2017;Jones, 2016;Kelly, 2012;Stampnitzky, 2016) …”

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confidence: 99%

Truth and consequences? Reconceptualizing the politics of exposure

Stampnitzky

2020

Security Dialogue

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“…In other work I will explore the relations between these cases, although this paper focuses solely on the US case. 18 The concept of 'lawfare' first took hold in American military discourse in 2001, when 'a prominent US military lawyer proposed the neologism "lawfare", which he defined as "the use of law as a weapon of war"' (Jones, 2015). 19 Rumsfeld then notes that after Belgium asserted universal jurisdiction and Franks was named in the lawsuit, he threatened to move NATO's headquarters, and 'the Belgian government repealed their law' (Rumsfeld, 2011: 598).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Lawyers' War: States and Human Rights in a Transnational Field

Stampnitzky¹

2016

The Sociological Review

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While torture and assassination have not infrequently been used by states, the post 9/11 'war on terror' waged by the US has been distinguished by the open acknowledgement of, and political and legal justifications put forward in support of, these practices. This is surprising insofar as the primary theories that have been mobilized by sociologists and political scientists to understand the relation between the spread of human rights norms and state action presume that states will increasingly adhere to such norms in their rhetoric, if not always in practice. Thus, while it is not inconceivable that the US would engage in torture and assassination, we would expect these acts would be conducted under a cloak of deniability. Yet rather than pure hypocrisy, the US war on terror has been characterized by the development of a legal infrastructure to support the use of 'forbidden' practices such as torture and assassination, along with varying degrees of open defence of such tactics. Drawing on first-order accounts presented in published memoirs, this paper argues that the Bush administration developed such openness as a purposeful strategy, in response to the rise of a legal, technological, and institutional transnational human rights infrastructure which had turned deniability into a less sustainable option. It concludes by suggesting that a more robust theory of state action, drawing on sociological field theory, can help better explain the ways that transnational norms and institutions affect states.

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“…While this has provided opportunities for redress, it is also shifting responsibility for accessing the basic resources of life down to individuals without the ability to navigate complex legal systems. The expanding and deepening system of lawfare in both Europe and beyond -understood as the resort to legal instruments to pursue political ends -entrenches this potential inequality and violence (Jones, 2016).…”

Section: Alex Jeffreymentioning

confidence: 99%

Interventions on Europe's political futures

McConnell

Kuus

Jeffrey

et al. 2017

Political Geography

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At the best of times Europe is a vast and unwieldy topic. As was the case 25 years agoanother moment when a culmination of events warranted reflection on Europe's political futures-writing from the midst of geopolitical and geo-economic upheaval raises the challenge of how to gain perspective, to reflect on what is happening and to reassess how we approach issues. Yet as critical scholars it is imperative that we do so. In reflecting on the manifold challenges to the idea and space of Europe the interventions that follow are provocations: posing questions, unsettling taken for granted frameworks, and calling for new ways of thinking about and politically contributing to 'Europe'. Each author approaches Europe from a distinct perspective and offers a particular lens on contemporary European issues, bringing in ideas and framings from international relations, law, economic geography and migration studies. They also each draw on insights from their extensive empirical research in and on Europe. Cross-cutting the interventions are two calls to action: to rethink our analytical approaches to Europe, and to reframe our role as critical scholars. The interventions make the case for a renewed analytical toolbox through a focus on three themes that have long animated political geography scholarship on Europe: borders, power and crises. The spatial politics of Europe is a topic that has consistently featured in the pages of this journal. Underpinning much of this work has been an interest in Europe's borders: their post-Cold War realignment, the differentiation between 'permeable' internal and 'fortress' external borders of the EU (Scott and van Houtum 2009; Carr 2012) and the Union's relationship with its neighbours (Bialasiewicz et al 2009; Petrakos et al 2016). The interventions by Smith and Vaughan-Williams speak to this work on Europe's borders, and, in drawing on the work of Balibar and Derrida respectively, do so in ways that bring to the fore vital questions of inclusion and exclusion, openness to the Other and violent closures. Vaughan-Williams calls for attention to be turned to the emergence of bordering practices that are enacted under the guise of humanitarian action in order to render 'irregular' populations 'knowable' and thus 'governable'. Meanwhile Smith argues that paying attention to borders as an intermingling of the geopolitical and geo-economic is crucial to mapping out emerging political geographies of difference, (uneven) development and power(lessness) in Europe today. As illustrated by Smith's focus on inequality and marginalisation, the question of the nature of power in Europe runs through the interventions. Whilst much existing work has focused on the changing dynamics of EU 'soft' and 'civilian' power (Bachmann and Sidaway 2009;

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Lawfare and the juridification of late modern war

Cited by 46 publications

References 38 publications

Truth and consequences? Reconceptualizing the politics of exposure

Truth and consequences? Reconceptualizing the politics of exposure

The Lawyers' War: States and Human Rights in a Transnational Field

Interventions on Europe's political futures

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