Rule of law has long been the protector of some of society’s most cherished concepts from freedom of speech to the provision of fairness and justice.

But could the law also sow the seeds of destruction for the liberties it is meant to defend? It’s a disturbing question and one that Brooke Goldstein thinks isn’t asked enough.

“I’m referring to the abuse and manipulation of Western legal systems to undermine the very principles that those systems stand for,” said the New York-based filmmaker and human rights attorney.

Goldstein, who will be speaking in St. Louis next week as part of the American Jewish Congress’s Jacobs Lecture, is director of the Lawfare Project. “Lawfare” is an unfamiliar term for many. Meaning something akin to “legal warfare,” it refers to the misuse of legal avenues at the national and even international level to cripple or delegitimize democracies. The word was coined by retired U.S. Major General John Dunlap who employed it to refer to use of the law as a weapon of war.

Goldstein believes just such a war is taking place in courts from here to The Hague. She said much of today’s lawfare is directed at Israel and can be seen most vividly at the United Nations, where votes condemning the Jewish State are common.

She doesn’t confine the concept to resolutions however. Words themselves can also play a role.

“Lawfare operates in a whole variety of arenas but it is not just using the court system,” she said. “It’s also about manipulating legal terminology with terms like apartheid, genocide or terrorism. You can look up in the dictionary a term like apartheid. It has a particular legal meaning to it and yet the term is applied to situations where it is completely inapplicable.”

Goldstein said European courts have also been fertile ground for challenges to Israel’s legitimacy. A visit to Britain by Israel’s Kadima party leader Tzipi Livni was cancelled when it was feared Livni might be arrested under the terms of a UK war crimes law that allowed individuals to file for arrest warrants on such matters. According to Reuters, such a warrant was issued for Livni in 2009 in relation to Israel’s Gaza offensive the previous year. The news agency reported that in 2010, Israel said it had ceased sending delegations to Britain altogether due to the problem and this spring, a military adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not accompany him on a trip to the island nation, apparently for the same reason.

Similar issues came to the fore in Belgium, where a 2003 filing accused U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair of war crimes. The diplomatic fallout grew to the point where Washington threatened to cut off funding for the new NATO headquarters in the country. Belgium reformed the law.

This month, a recent change in the statutes has finally allowed Livni to visit without fear of incarceration but Goldstein said the problem still persists elsewhere due to a doctrine called “universal jurisdiction” under which courts in a given nation can accept charges even if the alleged crimes did not take place there.

“The Hague and certain national courts in Spain have said that they are entitled to hear certain charges related to war crimes and genocide and other abuses within their national court system regardless of whether or not they have a connection to the plaintiff or the issues at trial,” she said.

Goldstein said the United States is not immune to lawfare either. She believes such activity in America often takes the form of so-called “SLAPP” suits, legal actions initiated with an eye towards discouraging or burdening defendants even though the plaintiff has little or no chance of winning. The acronym derives from the phrase “Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation.”

Goldstein said libel suits are a favorite area for domestic litigation, being designed to intimidate journalists, satirists and researchers from taking on certain groups or individuals.

“The most prominent aspect of lawfare within this country is the filing of frivolous and malicious defamation lawsuits with the pure intent of punishing and silencing criticism of militant Islam and [attempts to expose] terrorism financing,” she said.

Goldstein is also critical of those who say that Osama bin Laden and other terrorists should have been given Miranda rights and tried rather than targeted for assassination. She said this confuses human rights laws with the laws of armed conflict.

“A state is entitled to shoot and kill an enemy combatant on the battlefield,” she said. “That is the oldest rule of warfare. That is in fact the definition of warfare.”

And what constitutes warfare in the legal arena?

“It’s a question of intent. If their intent is to pursue justice, to use the legal system within the confines of how it was meant to be used, to apply the law according to the original intent of the framers of that law, then that is not lawfare,” Goldstein said. “But when someone’s intent is to undermine the very legal system they are attempting to operate within, then that’s lawfare.”

Jay Umansky of the local American Jewish Congress, said Goldstein was an appropriate speaker for the Jacobs event, which is designed to take on issues of concern to Jews. The last Jacobs Lecture featured a 2006 discussion on stem cell research that included Dr. William Danforth. The lecture event honors Sydney and Sylvia Jacobs who were supporters of the AJCongress.

“The entire Jewish community should find this topic of great concern and Brooke is a speaker of international note on this subject,” he said. “I think she will be both insightful and enlightening.”

Goldstein is also a founder and director of the Children’s Right Institute and a former director of the Legal Project at the Middle East Forum, which provides legal representation for individuals it contends are wrongfully sued for exercising free speech. A regular commentator for Fox News, she has also been seen in other media from CNN to the American Spectator and is known as a filmmaker having produced “The Making of a Martyr,” a film about child suicide bombers. She was listed in 2009 as one of the “36 Under 36 Young Innovators” by the Jewish Week.

AJCongress talk

Brooke Goldstein will speak at Congregation Shaare Emeth on Friday, Oct. 28 with services at 6 p.m., a dinner at 7:15 and the talk beginning at 8. The event is free but there is $20 charge for the dinner.

Call 314-569-0010 for more information. RSVPs are requested.