The counterterrorism policies introduced by most European governments
in the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks
have stirred up many political and academic controversies. In the political
realm, their defenders have persistently presented them as vital for the
protection of the people and denied any possible jeopardizing of domestic
civil rights and liberties, while their opponents have strongly
denounced their resulting brisk strengthening of the executive power and
the subsequent weakening of human rights and the rule of law 1. In the
academic community, several scholars sought to explain this normalization
of the exceptional in the Western legal systems and saw in it either a
form of ordinary governance 2 or, on the contrary, the emergence of a
new form of go-vernmentality 3. Others
