ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the public goods with a view to indicate how a common area of security, justice and freedom (AFSJ) becomes central to understanding the practices of the AFSJ in constitutional terms, and more specifically, as commitments to constitutional goods. It shows how the goods of security, freedom and justice can be understood as common commitments of the European Union (EU). The chapter offers two radically alternate conceptions of public goods one instrumental and the other constitutional. It highlights a crucial distinction between this, constitutional, way of understanding public goods, and a different way, which is termed as 'instrumental goods'. Charles Taylor writes that the individual interest approach, in understanding public goods, relies upon an 'atomistic' conception of good. One of the steps in exploring an understanding of constitutional public goods is to expand upon the claim that it is the practical involvement with 'goods' which reveals the constitutional commitments made by a political community.
