| Summary: Lazarus argument cautions against viewing the right to security as a meta-right (ie. A right which is seen as a pre-condition to the enjoyment of all other rights); if we are to recognize a right to security, it needs to be meaningful on its own terms and distinctive and specifically articulated in terms of the clear and meaningful obligations and duties it creates, designed to protect essential interests which cannot be protected through already existing rights; if we privilege the right to security, this may detract or distract from other rights; our focus should be on protecting these other rights in their first instance; any right to security needs to be narrow in order to risk it being used to legitimate the coercive overreach of the state using the politics and rhetoric of security; if we don’t resist the tendency to use the right to security as a means through which all other human interests are protected, we risk colluding in a subtle reordering of the hierarchy of rights, with rights to liberty, life and dignity being submerged under the apex of the right to security |
| Competing conceptions of security: According to Hobbes, the transition of humanity from a state of nature to a political community is motivated by the promise of security, which in turn provides conditions in which our lives can become meaningful and culturally and socially expressive Hobbes gave security such primacy that no one in his society could contest the power of the provider of the peace (the sovereign power) Instead, in his view, the social contract was a bargain between individuals to cede their liberty to the extent necessary to avoid war For Hobbes, security was both the rationale for the existence of the state and the justification for unlimited sovereign power over the subjects within it Although Hobbes knew there would be complaints about the sovereign, Hobbes thought the good of security too valuable to be threatened by civil dispute It is easy to disagree with Hobbes about what is in our interests This account is instructive insofar as it highlights the value of security and its connection with political power and his understanding of the way that the good of security allows for human flourishing and social and cultural development BUT the primacy Hobbes affords to security and the power he gives to the sovereign is less persuasive as he fails to appreciate how the state itself can pose a threat to individual security Hobbes’ recognition of the value of security as a prerequisite to the realization of other individual and social goods has echoes in contemporary justifications for security as a meta-right The immediacy of insecurity and our strength of our fear of harm can lead us to prioritise security at the cost of corroding other social goods Centuries after Hobbes, liberals generally agree that security has to be balanced with other goods and its attainment at the expense of all liberty and all capacity to challenge political power is a step too far We need to craft a conception of security that is good not just for security’s sake but for the social arrangements flowing from its pursuit For Locke, Hobbes’ society threatened the security of citizens themselves Unlike Hobbes’ agreement between subjects to cede their liberty to an unrestricted sovereign power, Locke’s social contract imposes reciprocal obligations on the state which had to be liberty regarding For Locke, the point of entering into a political community was precisely to optimize the enjoyment of one’s liberty and property In entering society from the state of nature, men give up certain freedoms but they dos o only with an intention in every one the better to preserve himself his liberty and property Locke did not share Hobbes’ view of the state of nature as a state of war, nor of the benefits of an absolute monarchy to preserve against such a condition He brought sovereign power down from the pedestal and argued that absolute monarchs are but men and favoured limits on their powers instead, viewing absolute power as the greatest threat to the security of individuals Where a sovereign power breaches trust, they forfeit power the people put in their hands and the power devolves to the people who have a right to resume their original liberty If arbitrary power constitutes the greatest threat to the security and preservation of individuals, its antithesis constituted the greatest source of security for Locke power needs to be constrained by law and people find security within the limits of law Since the power of the government is only for the good of society it ought to be exercised by established and promulgated law Locke’s conception of security thus differed greatly from that of Hobbes he agreed that security underpins meaningful human existence and constituted the object of civic or political community but his ideal of security was a rich conception embedded in the enjoyment of basic rights to liberty, life and property It was the law’s capacity to protect these rights and the law’s limits on sovereign power that kept individuals safe and secure within the limits of the law This theory forms the foundation of a liberal conception of the right to security grounded in the protection of liberty, life and property Hobbes: peace/bare security is a value so important as to supersede other goods Locke: a rich conception of security is inseparable from the enjoyment of the liberties and property that is naturally ours to enjoy This balance between liberty and security remains a perennial debate in liberal theory today The right to security B identified a right to personal security as the first of the three absolute and natural rights of man – the right of personal security, the right of personal liberty and the right of private property He identified these rights as primary rights, belonging to persons merely in a state of nature and the law’s primary goals was the enforcement and balancing of those rights His right to security included rights to protection from the state as well as rights to resources and so this conception of the right to security went beyond protecting life It also protected against risks to health and damage to reputation This is the first extensive account of security as a personal and legal right vested in individuals But this account offers little guidance on the balance between the absolute rights – these issues of balance are sharper when we introduce the notion of a basic right to security Without clear guidance on where to place the right to security in a hierarchy of rights, states may face irreconcilable legal duties Rights are basic if and when enjoyment of them is essential to the enjoyment of all other rights Shue identified security as one of the three basic rights (as well as liberty and subsistence) The right to security was therefore of utmost importance a meta-right which acts as a precondition to the enjoyment of all other rights (a novel claim) Shue makes an instrumental and pre-conditional argument and defines the right to security as the right not to be subjected to murder, torture, mayhem, rape or assault He enumerates three duties that correlate to the existence of a basic right to security the state’s correlative duties to act are a key insight into the scope of this right to security, seeing a smaller role for liberty the enjoyment of rights to every liberty is dependent on the enjoyment of security and subsistence His account of liberty as a basic right is a thinner rendition of the kind of liberty Locke viewed as intrinsically valuable When viewed from the perspective of the correlative duties flowing from this basic right to security, the right to liberty appears more limited than the right to security Notwithstanding these worthy intentions, this article argues that the potential for the state’s coercive overreach is shaped by the environment in which the right to security and its duties is articulated states seeking to legitimate extensive security measures may draw on the notion of security as a basic right in more pernicious ways and this account of broad state duties to mitigate threats to personal security coupled with a thin conception of liberty provides more ammunition to proponents of the security state than Shue might have anticipated Fredman identifies security as an essential prerequisite to the exercise of liberty and argues based on the theory of human agency a human being must have certain capabilities protected in order to allow them to actualize their autonomy and freedom of choice and autonomy can only flourish when key social conditions are in place Powell also relies on the capabilities approach and argues security is a relational concept which requires a set of referent to give it a meaningful content; developed a theory of personhood to give meaning to the right to security – failing to recognize issues as security issues will only protect a limited part of what is essential to the person Fredman and Powell provide justification for the positive and negative aspects to the right to security and emphasise the material provisions required to facilitate the...
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