Waters on the Neutral Conception of "Lawfare" (and This Blog's Contribution to that Conception)

Even in the popular discourse, however, change may be afoot. In September 2010, three prominent national security scholars founded a new blog entitled "Lawfare: Hard National Security Choices." The blog has quickly emerged as one of the premier sites for serious discussion of national security issues. In introducing the blog, one of its founders, Benjamin Wittes of the Brookings Institution, offered the following explanation for the blog's appropriation of the term lawfare": "We mean to devote this blog to that nebulous zone in which actions taken or contemplated to protect the nation interact with the nation's laws and legal institutions The name Lawfare refers both to the use of law as a weapon of conflict and, perhaps more importantly, to the depressing reality that America remains at war with itself over the law governing its warfare with others It is our hope to provide an ongoing commentary on America's lawfare, even as we participate in many of its skirmishes." Thus the new Lawfare blog reintroduces into the popular discourse a notion of  "lawfare" that is in keeping with the "critical self-reflection" conception of the term. For those who worry that the term has been hijacked and that an  ideologically neutral conception of "lawfare" has disappeared from the popular discourse, this blog provides some evidence that they may have sounded its death knell a bit too soon.