ABSTRACT
The idea of striking a new balance can be interpreted more or less literally. We know the language of balance is used in morality and politics when there are things to be said on both sides of an issue, values that pull us in opposite directions. Talk of balance—particularly talk of changes in the balance as circumstances and consequences change—may not be appropriate in the realm of civil liberties. “Rights as trumps” is so far just another piece of imagery to pit against “striking a new balance.” The balance does not affect the priority we accord to liberty: it affects only our discussion of what the appropriate liberty is. Ronald Dworkin has argued in a number of places that there is some confusion in the idea of a balance of interests between the individual and the community: “The interests of each individual are already balanced into the interests of the community as a whole, and the idea of a further balance, between their separate interests and the results of the first balance, is itself therefore mysterious.”.
