What is “Lawfare”?

"Chinese Lawfare 101"
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/did-missouri-just-out-lawfare-china-153126

"“Lawfare” is the use of law as a weapon of war against a military adversary. Lawfare critics complain that self-proclaimed “humanitarians” are really engaged in the partisan and political abuse of law—lawfare."
https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/facpub/621/

"Lawfare is an asymmetrical warfare technique that finds its greatest value in politics. One wages lawfare through innuendo, frivolous lawsuits, and a suggestion of impropriety where none exists."
https://www.conservapedia.com/Lawfare

"In fact, such is the potential to misuse the power of the law by stronger nations for gaining advantage over adversaries and advancing their own interests that the law is now being called the ‘greatest weapon of mass-destruction in modern times’.

This doctrine is well established in the West as ‘Lawfare’."
https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/893337-the-lawfare-trap

"Lawfare is thought to be of increasing importance, but it seems increasingly clear that the term itself means different things in different circles, and apparently sometimes different things in the same circle."
https://balkin.blogspot.com/2011/07/meanings-of-lawfare.html?m=1

"the law can be employed as something of a weapon"

"Lawfare, as used by the Soviet Union and Russian Federation, is the manipulation or exploitation of the international legal system to supplement military and political objectives. The Soviet Union and Russian Federation used these legal restrictions to supplement military strategy in an attempt, not to limit themselves, but to control other states legally, politically, and equally as important, publicly, through the use of propaganda."
https://sites.duke.edu/lawfire/2021/09/23/yes-there-is-consensus-that-lawfare-exists-but-america-still-needs-a-strategy-for-it/

"Over the past decade, there has been growing interest in legal warfare or “lawfare.” While the U.S. is focusing on the interplay between the law and counterinsurgency operations, China is approaching lawfare from a different perspective: as an offensive weapon capable of hamstringing opponents and seizing the political initiative. Indeed, Chinese planners are almost certainly preparing legal war plans aimed at controlling the enemy through the law or using the law to constrain the enemy."
https://www.heritage.org/asia/report/winning-without-fighting-chinese-legal-warfare

"Unable or unwilling to challenge other states militarily, states use legal strategies to weaken the enemy’s legitimacy. Such “lawfare” can be used to achieve a kinetic objective, to forestall one, to degrade the enemy’s will to fight, and to shape the narrative of war. The Chinese military prioritizes lawfare as one of the “Three Warfares” that shape its military’s influence operations. Meanwhile, the U.S. has no similar lawfare doctrine or strategy, even as China is forcing it to fight back"
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3525442

"The term lawfare has existed for some time, but its modern usage first appeared in a paper this author wrote for Harvard’s Kennedy School in 2001.10 Lawfare represents an effort to provide military and other nonlawyer audiences an easily understood “bumper sticker” phrasing for how belligerents, and particularly those unable to challenge America’s high-tech military capabilities, are attempting to use law as a form of “asymmetric” warfare.11

Over time, the definition has evolved, but today it is best understood as the use of law as a means of accomplishing what might otherwise require the application of traditional military force."
https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/Military-Review/English-Edition-Archives/May-June-2017/Dunlap-Lawfare-101/

"while China has adopted and implemented lawfare as a major strategy, the U.S. government has thus far failed to engage systematically with lawfare."
https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com//mobile/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190263577.001.0001/acprof-9780190263577

"The use of the judicial system against one's opponents, often only to attack or condemn a rival."
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/lawfare

Lawfare Group Begins Delegitimizing Supreme Court…
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2019/09/15/lawfare-group-begins-delegitimizing-supreme-court/