Administrative due process of law in liberal democracies: a post-9/11 world

due process of law; procedural requirements; administrative procedures

Over the past ten years, in liberal democracies, the balance between authority and freedom has been more or less evidently modified by the measures taken by public authorities against trans-national terrorism. While Part I specifies that the article focuses on administrative measures, considered from the point of view of due process of law, Part II illustrates briefly how that such measures have deeply affected national constitu- tional settings, rather than merely reshaping some of their elements. Part III argues that, especially after an initial period, the courts have ensured that the procedural requirements imposed on governments are respected, although some of these requirements have been redefined. This leads, in part IV, to a twofold conclusion: procedural guarantees, grounded in the liberal democratic institutions, and are still important and merit being preserved, especially in the light of changes occurred at a global level, but nostalgia for a (supposed) golden era of constitutionalism, conceived at the level of the State, is inadvisable for those who are interested in keeping those safeguards alive.