This erudite yet very readable book will introduce many readers to the concept of “lawfare” and how it has been waged around the globe. With lawfare, as opposed to warfare, insurgent movements use the courts to achieve military objectives. Frank Ledwidge describes how insurgents initiate litigation to delay or disrupt an occupying power’s military operations or mount hopeless defences in civil and criminal litigation. They know that the publicity they gain will outweigh the loss of a particular case. Where possible they set up an alternative legal system. Ledwidge cites the Dáil Courts, during the Irish War of Independence, as one of the most successful examples of insurgent “rupture strategy” supplanting the established judicial system – even unionists opposed to the republican rebels used the Dáil Courts to collect debts. Other insurgencies he considers include Islamic State and the Taliban. The author is a former lawyer who writes from personal experience, having served as a military intelligence officer with the occupying British army in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.
