This book is devoted to exploring an age-old problem which touches upon people’s
lives and requires constant deliberation: the necessity of limiting State power to
protect individuals, including non-citizens. Accordingly, it is important to recognize
human rights which exist prior to the state. These pre-political or natural rights
lie beyond the siren song of sovereignty and are not negotiable whether through
legislation, executive power (or otherwise). Protecting these rights, as conceived in law,
avoids allowing the excessive exercise of State power, a power which is otherwise
neither limited nor restrained.
In countering terrorism, the State is not allowed to exercise unrestrained power. It
may not rely on a supposed national or popular sovereignty or even on the legitimacy
of the democratic process. While establishing limits on State power and lawmaking
may not completely resolve the complex relationship between national
security and the protection of fundamental rights, it may moderate the State’s often
excessive utilitarian approach which, focusing more on the quantum than on quod ,
ignores the pre-political dimension of human rights and trivializes – if not ignores –
the dignity of each human being, leaving him/her unprotected from the absolute
power of Leviathan.