Does the intensified endeavour to achieve security in Europe conflict with the preservation of civil rights and liberties? Or is the new direction that civil rights and liberties are currently taking a philosophical, societal imperative? Is an interest in a free society supplanting the hard-won liberty of the individual? Is the security of a society without individual liberty at all conceivable? Can these observations and reflections even be understood as an organic development in modern societies, and, consequently, the "European constitutional state" already on the way to becoming a security state? Does penal law, for example, which otherwise has maximum guarantees in the interest of liberty, increasingly feature preventive policing elements? Finally, is it at all possible to reconcile liberty, security and law?The contributions to this volume deal with these issues, discussing extensively and comprehensively the tense relationship between the need for security and for liberty.