Reviewed By: James G. Apple, Editor-in-Chief,
International Judicial Monitor, and President, International Judicial Academy
Even though this book is
seemingly restricted to “security in Europe,” as stated in its title, its value
lies far beyond the borders of the European Union. This is because it deals
with two subjects, “law” and ”security” that transcend national or regional
boundaries, and encompass matters that are, or should be, of concern to the
entire world. The subjects are especially important in the United States, where
issues of security are proving to be a continuous and pervasive problem for
law-makers, government officials and the military.
Security is a word that
arises often in the press and contemporary discourse in the modern world, but
particularly in the United States where government officials, elected or
appointed, almost continually refer to actions or topics as being related to “national
security.” The word has been especially ubiquitous in matters relating to
government secrecy – certain matters are not allowed to be discussed and
certain documents are not allowed to be disclosed because they relate to
national security. Government officials routinely hide behind the phrase to
explain their refusal to discuss certain topics. This tactic may have had its
origins, but certainly its first notoriety, during the administration of
Richard Nixon in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He and his staff refused to
turn over tapes made of the President’s conversations in the Watergate scandal
because they involved matters of “national security.”
As security has become a more
frequently used word in government discourse and the justification for not
revealing many different kinds of government actions in various places within
the United States government, its meaning has become blurred.
In this relatively small
volume, the editors have chosen a very select group of writers to dissect the
word security and its meaning as used in contemporary societies, with special
attention to its contemporary use and its relation to law. All of the writers
and the two editors, with one exception, are connected in one way or another to
Finland, in particular for most of them, with the University of Helsinki. The
one exception is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Southampton (Alum
Gibbs).
The editors acknowledge that
“security is a manifold and complicated concept” and has both positive and
negative connotations. In its positive light security means “guaranteeing the
function of the system in question through securing its primary function and
protecting it against external or internal disruption.” The dark side of
security is its role in hiding from or preventing exposure to the media and the
public, actions and activities that would or might be considered harmful to the
system that is to be protected, such as intrusion on civil or human rights of
the system’s populace.
Because security and law
“interact in a variety of ways, [and] when they do, the background is usually
that of a highly conflictive nature,” the authors seek to impress on the reader
the need for nations to understand the different aspects of security and the
need for security issues to be more fully taken into consideration in creating
and interpreting constitutions. In other words security has become so important
in the affairs of nation-states and its implications in developing internal and
external policy that government officials, constitutional law experts, and
jurists need to engage in extensive study and analyses of it within the context
of constitutional law. In fact one of the essayists has created a new phrase,
“European Security Constitution.” This label could be modified and adapted for
other countries with the label simply “security constitution.”
One of the editors of the
book, Jens Kremer, sets the tone of the publication by presenting the first
essay following the Introduction. In discussing issues relating to security and
law, he identifies two “mindsets” or approaches: “Security is … perceived
either from a protective perspective or a perspective of exceptionality.” He
writes: