Dr Dieter Grimm, author of 'Sovereignty: The Past, Present and Future of a Political Concept', and 'Constitutionalism: Past, Present, and Future' and with affiliations to Harvard and Yale Universities gave a talk on 'Liberty and Security in the Times of International Terrorism' atSynergia Foundation, Bangalore on 13 January 2017. Several dignitaries and experts attended.

Dr. Grimm's address rooted in the historio-legal framework of understanding liberty and security. He flagged off the talk with the crux of his argument for making liberty more secure.  This refuted the basic binary understanding of liberty and security as a zero sum game, wherein to attain security, the liberty must be sacrificed. If security maximization is the goal, it can bestow the state machinery with unrestrained power breaching the fundamental rights of the people. On the other hand, unconditional liberty is an invitation for exploitation by the non-state actors. The post-9/11 world has made the retroactive measures of attaining national security obsolete. It now requires a proactive prevention, placing information as quintessential to security. Although in democracies, the safeguards on liberty flow from the constitution, it has been observed that in the wake of rising threat of terrorism the threshold for state intervention into individual liberty has consistently been lowered.

This binary opposition can be resolved by establishing a hierarchy to determine which security needs are more important than the others. This led on to the proportionality principle followed by the courts of certain countries like Germany and Israel. This principle is the premise upon which liberty and security are weighed and balanced before deciding the primacy of one over the other.  Therefore, the purpose for which the liberty of an individual or a group is being sacrificed needs to be legitimate. The means applied to reach the ends must also be proportional. Ultimately, there needs to be made a distinction between limiting a right, and violating a right in the name of national security. Dr. Grimm spoke from his German experience where the right to dignity of an individual is placed at a higher pedestal than the fundamental rights. Therefore, before any legal judgment is made, it is mandatory to consider that in whose interest the fundamental right is being violated.

The interactive discussion that succeeded that talk touched on various ideas to resolve the deadlock between liberty and security in the times of international terrorism. The Indian case of AFSPA in Kashmir and India’s Northeast andthe US role in Guantanamo Bay came up for discussion. Maj. Gen.(Redt.) Moni Chandiin his concluding remarks observed that the government should use security as a resource, to strike at the source of the conflict, in order to prevent the rise of non-state actors. This preemption of conflict can prevent the draconian laws that are imposed upon the civilians during the conflict.