Security Issues as Existential Threat to the Community

Abstract

In many respects, fear can be considered one of the attributes of modernity. One does not need to be a 19th century proto-existentialist to acknowledge that the recognition of the multiple potentialities inherent in individual freedom is always a cause for uncertainty and therefore fear. This feature is somehow reflected in modern law much more than may appear at first sight. Law sometimes tries to contain this fear, and some other times it employs it as a tool to justify its own technicalities and modus operandi. One of the aspects where this connection emerges more clearly is that of security. This paper intends first to offer an analysis of the concept of security in transnational law, in particular in the different fields of law where the security discourse is presented as a 'threat to the community', in order to propel constitutional changes toward a certain more or less pre-determined direction. Second, the paper aims to show how the security discourse operates in the relationship between European courts and concludes that the struggle over the definition of matters of security is also a struggle on the constitutional competences of national and supranational bodies.