After 9/11, is increasing talk of alleged balances between liberty and security — balances foreshadowing the transformation of Constitutional State in a Security State. The balance’s metaphor is shared by value pluralism, the metaethics ascribing to values characters like objectivity, plurality, conflictivity, incommensurability, and indeterminacy (§ 2), with postwar new constitutionalism, ascribing the same characters to constitutional principles (§ 3). However, the analysis of the alleged balances between liberty, on the one hand, and individual, social and national security respectively, on the other, produces the following results. Restraining individual liberties weakens individual security too, without increasing at a significant extent collective security.
