Can lawyers make “war”?
If we hold to the idea that peace is war by other means, it would seem that law is the weapon of choice for war by other means. I have in mind a recent case of a dam that was to be built in India. The Indian government rescinded the contract and the dam ended up never being constructed, yet India is still paying for the dam–millions of dollars annually. This is the same principle present in the Home Improvement case, which section 7 recently had in Contracts. There, a homeowner ordered window construction, rescinded the contract a few days later and was then demanded to pay more than half the amount of the full project. In that case however the court held the agreement unconscionable as it required a large amount of money for barely anything in exchange.
A good case can be made that such agreement was not in fact unconscionable but that is not my concern in this post. Here I am concerned with how legal rules can make “war” on other parties and, when the parties are countries, countries. Imagine we wanted to destroy India’s dam. It would require a cost on our part–we would need gas to flight the F-16s and ammunitions to destroy the structure. Those are resources we lose. But with the use of lawyers in this case we are draining their resources while increasing ours. It’s almost as if we are taking territory away from them. From this point of view, making war the military is less efficient than with lawyers. In the former case we both lose resources, in the latter we win resources while they lose.
What follows from the fact that lawyers can make “war”? What I hope follows is a recognition that lawyers have the power to leave a country in shambles, or make it rich, depending where we are distributing the resources. Through the use of legal rules like Home Improvement we create imaginary stop signs that give green light to some while stopping others.