Law as reason vs law as will in the fight against terrorism: from a Hobbesian conception of law to an Orwellian society

The key issue for contemporary constitutional democracies does not consist solely in setting up effective procedural mechanisms to grant legitimacy to governments, but in establishing effective controls over the exercise of power, as means to avoid its degeneration into domination and to guarantee its relation to axiomatic or ethical criteria. For that to be feasible, law needs to be based upon reason, not upon will; otherwise, the will of the state would be enough to perfectly justify and legitimise almost any measure in the name of the security. This lesson is particularly relevant today for constitutional democracies in countering terrorism.