When Law Becomes a Weapon: Lawfare, Hybrid Warfare, and Democratic Vulnerability with Prof. Cynthia Alkon
Date: November 26, 2026 5:30 PM - 7:00 PM
Location: Kingston Hall - 301
Hybrid warfare blurs the line between war and peace. Hostile states and their proxies use a mix of tools, including disinformation, cyber operations, election interference, economic coercion, and sabotage of critical infrastructure, to weaken their rivals while staying below the threshold of armed conflict. One of the least understood of these tools is lawfare: a threat actor turning a country’s own domestic legal system against it. Lawfare exploits the courts, regulatory processes, and legal protections that open societies rely on, and uses them to harass critics, tie up institutions, shape public debate, and erode trust in the rule of law.In this conversation, Professor Cynthia Alkon and Jeanette Stovel will look at how lawfare works in practice and why democracies are especially exposed to it. They’ll place lawfare within the wider landscape of current hybrid threats facing Canada, the United States, and their allies. They’ll also ask how democratic states can build legal resilience without giving up the openness and due-process values that make them targets in the first place.
Location: Kingston Hall - 301
Hybrid warfare blurs the line between war and peace. Hostile states and their proxies use a mix of tools, including disinformation, cyber operations, election interference, economic coercion, and sabotage of critical infrastructure, to weaken their rivals while staying below the threshold of armed conflict. One of the least understood of these tools is lawfare: a threat actor turning a country’s own domestic legal system against it. Lawfare exploits the courts, regulatory processes, and legal protections that open societies rely on, and uses them to harass critics, tie up institutions, shape public debate, and erode trust in the rule of law.In this conversation, Professor Cynthia Alkon and Jeanette Stovel will look at how lawfare works in practice and why democracies are especially exposed to it. They’ll place lawfare within the wider landscape of current hybrid threats facing Canada, the United States, and their allies. They’ll also ask how democratic states can build legal resilience without giving up the openness and due-process values that make them targets in the first place.