The concept of lawfare focuses comparatively on legal contestations over Israeli and US policies and practices in their twenty-first century armed conflicts, the second intifada and the global “war on terror,” respectively. Dr. Hajjar traces the contemporary relationship between law and conflict, and political debates arising from these developments. In order to name a phenomenon integral to evolving uses of law, Dr. Hajjar uses “state lawfare” to describe the ways in which government officials construct interpretative edifices to project the lawfulness of policies that deviate from international interpretations of international humanitarian law.

Tuesday, February 5, 2013 | 6:00 - 8:00 pm
AUB Building 37 - CASAR (behind Lee Observatory)

Lisa Hajjar is a Visiting Associate Professor from the University of California - Santa Barbara. She is offering Sociology of Human Rights, in which students will discuss the social and political pressures that led to the creation of human rights, global human rights activism, and the relationships between rights and war and law. She is also teaching Law, Politics, & The US. "War on Terror", which will focus on the legal and political implications of policies instituted by the Bush and Obama administrations, specifically in regards to torture, targeted killing, military occupation, and litigation that challenges the government's treatment of prisoners.