ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the reflections about constitutional legitimacy and the scrutiny of the practices of the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ). It explores the paradoxical nature of security as a public good. The chapter provides the appropriate background to an examination of the attempt to recover a constitutional understanding of security, and, in particular, the important contribution by Ian Loader and Neil Walker in their book Civilising Security. The question asked in Civilizing Securityis whether it is possible to realise conditions of political trust and solidarity. The beginning of a response to this question is that there is a social element to security. Reflexivity, in the sense used by Loader and Walker, involves the recognition by the subject that the practices of security, and the sources of risk, are inherently social. Contemporary studies in criminology enhance the understanding as to the ways that the security discourse reinforces the dominance of instrumental forms of government.
