Bottom Line Up Front:

Rule of law and lawfare aren’t opposites – they’re two sides of the same ancient coin, and AI assistants completely missed it. Without one the other could not exist. ChatGPT, Claude, and others treat lawfare as a “modern concept” from 2001, ignoring 4,000 years of evidence stretching back to Hammurabi’s Code in 1750 BCE. The truth? Legal systems have always favored ruling classes over subjects, creating systematic bias disguised as neutral justice.

This three-part series reveals how rule of law and lawfare operate as partners in organized oppression. Part 1 exposes ancient foundations from Babylonian class-based punishments to medieval French officials using legal processes to “clog administrative systems” and “bury English officials under a deluge of legal cases.” The evidence is overwhelming: whoever controls the law gets to cram it down opponents’ throats. The “rule of law” isn’t justice – it’s organized power disguised as neutrality.

Even AI Assistants Miss the Systemic Pattern

Modern AI Gets It Wrong

Every major AI assistant fell into the same academic trap when asked about lawfare origins:

• ChatGPT and Claude: Started at 2001 Dunlap concept
• Grok 4: Goes back to 1950s, credits 1999 Chinese military book
• Other AIs: 1950s-1970s range maximum
• SuperGrok: Found 1835 usage, medieval Hundred Years War examples

The Modern Blind Spot

Many MAGA blogs and news sites automatically accept FBI raids on Trump critics like Bolton as legitimate “rule of law” enforcement. The New Neo’s recent post, A raid on Bolton, highlights this pattern perfectly.

While leftist sites claim the “justice system” is targeting Trump’s political critics, those same sites support lawfare tactics against Trump himself. The irony is lost on both sides: what they call righteous “rule of law” when it serves their interests becomes “weaponized litigation” when it targets them.

Rule of Law Foundation: Hammurabi’s Original Lawfare System

The World’s First Legal Class Warfare

Hammurabi’s Code of 1750 BCE established three rigid social classes with completely different legal treatment – the original blueprint for systematic lawfare:

• Amelu (elite nobles): King’s court officials, professionals, craftsmen who received full civil rights and recorded legal protections
• Mushkenu (free commoners): Landless citizens required to accept monetary compensation, paid reduced fines, lived in designated city sections
• Ardu (slaves): Legal property whose masters controlled all compensation, though they could own property and purchase freedom

Justice by Social Status, Not Actions

The 282 laws created systematic bias disguised as neutral justice. If a physician killed an elite patient during surgery, his hands were cut off. Kill a slave? Pay the master financial restitution. Same crime, different punishment based on victim’s class.

Class-based penalties meant “if a noble harmed a commoner, they were only required to pay a fine rather than face equivalent punishment.” The famous “eye for an eye” only applied within the same social class.

4,000-Year Blueprint for Legal Control

Hammurabi’s prologue claimed to “make justice visible in the land” while institutionalizing systematic oppression. Sound familiar? This ancient partnership between rule of law rhetoric and lawfare reality became the template every legal system since has followed.

Medieval Lawfare Tactics: French Legal Warfare Against English Authority

Systematic Legal Sabotage

French officials perfected weaponized litigation tactics centuries before the term existed. Historical research documents their sophisticated legal warfare:

• Administrative paralysis: French officials “deployed their expertise in the arcane intricacies of feudal law to continuously undermine Plantagenet (English) authority over their continental territories, ‘clogging up administrative processes’, ‘interfering with fiscal activities’ and burying English officials under a deluge of legal cases”
• Appeal flooding strategy: “Malefactors would appeal to the higher jurisdiction of the Kings of France, transferring their cases to the law courts of Paris”
• Legal immunity creation: “During this process, plaintiffs were legally untouchable and enjoyed the protection of the King’s officers, removing their land from the jurisdiction of the Dukes of Guyenne”

Pure Medieval Lawfare

This was weaponizing legal systems to destroy opponents without traditional warfare. The strategy worked – these tactics contributed directly to the outbreak of the Hundred Years War in 1337, proving rule of law and lawfare have been partners for centuries.

English King’s Law: Medieval Rule of Law & Lawfare Partnership

Royal Justice as Systematic Class Control

Medieval English law mirrored the class-based hierarchies of Hammurabi’s Code, embedding biases that favored the elite while disadvantaging commoners. Distinct legal procedures varied sharply by social status:

• Trial by Combat Privilege: Nobles could demand trial by combat in disputes over honor or grave crimes, resolving matters via a duel rather than evidence or testimony—often tilting the odds in favor of the physically trained upper class
• Peasant Punishment Ordeals: Commoners and peasants endured trial by ordeal, such as grasping a red-hot iron (innocence shown by unscarred healing) or being bound and thrown into water—brutal tests that were physically punishing and frequently lethal
• Court Access Denied: Villeins (unfree serfs) were largely excluded from royal courts when contesting land evictions or inheritances, confined instead to manorial courts governed by local customs that prioritized lords’ rights over theirs
• Elite Legal Escape Routes: The “benefit of clergy” let literate individuals shift cases to church courts, dodging harsh secular penalties like execution; illiterate peasants rarely qualified

Royal Manipulation Protecting Elite Interests

Royal courts expanded their reach under kings like Henry II, but this often shielded landed nobles and gentry through selective enforcement and manipulation. Magnates and knights routinely received royal pardons for offenses like extortion or assault, allowing them to resume roles in government or warfare—preserving elite power structures.

During the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt, insurgents deliberately burned royal court records to erase proofs of serfdom and debts, exposing how these institutions entrenched exploitative manorial biases.

Hammurabi’s System Perfected

This setup echoes Hammurabi’s Code, which protected property owners and elites with tiered penalties—harsher for offenses against superiors. Both systems prioritized upper-class safeguards, with medieval England refining ancient biases into a “primacy of the law” facade that masked systemic favoritism.

Outro

The Timeless Alliance

This historical deep dive uncovers a reality often overlooked—even by AI assistants: “rule of law” and “lawfare” aren’t modern rivals but ancient accomplices in a 4,000-year saga of systemic oppression. From Hammurabi’s tiered punishments that shielded elites while crushing the lower classes, to French Ancien Régime courts—complex, costly, and biased toward aristocrats (Gallica)—and medieval English laws that pardoned nobles while punishing peasants (Bracton). Legal systems consistently empower their architects. Legal systems consistently empower their architects.

• Part 2 uncovers how America refined this age-old template via targeted ethnic and racial injustices.
• Part 3 dismantles contemporary political theater, where both sides decry “lawfare” when on the receiving end but brandish “rule of law” as a weapon against foes.

In essence, one cannot thrive without the other—they’re eternally forged as two faces of the same corroded coin, minted in antiquity and circulated to this day.

(NOTE: More on Lawfare here – Epstein’s Game: Nature vs. Lawfare, Lying Accusers, and Political BS)