ABSTRACT
In countries like the United States with strong judicial review, the courts have proved reluctant to oppose reductions in civil liberties in times of war or war–like emergency. The term "civil liberties" represents a variety of concerns about the impact of governmental powers upon individual freedom. Because the issue of a change in the "balance" between civil liberties and securities plays out slightly differently for different kinds of concern. Civil liberties are often regarded as rights, and the idea of "rights as trumps"—which many have found appealing, at least at the level of rhetoric—is precisely the idea that rights are not to be regarded as vulnerable to routine changes in the calculus of social utility. Ronald Dworkin observes a temptation to think that the extraordinary gravity of the crimes that were committed on September 11 is itself a reason for diminishing the protections afforded to those who are charged with such offenses.
