Mapping the Right to Security

Abstract

This chapter argues for the narrowest possible conception of the notion of security in the context of a legally enforceable ‘right to security’. Such a right should only protect that which other self-standing and established rights cannot, on their face, protect. Consequently, the ‘right to security’ should not encompass long- established and self-standing rights such as the rights to life, dignity, liberty, health, freedom from torture and so on. If the ‘right to security’ means anything at all, it must protect against something not already and explicitly captured by these fundamental and self-standing rights. That is not to say that it is not possible for courts to imply or develop from these self-standing fundamental rights specific rights to aspects of security. But, for reasons examined in the chapter, it is less problematic to derive specific rights to security as grounded in existing fundamental rights than to talk of these as being derived from an overarching and self-standing meta-right to security.