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With a domestic crisis and war in the East, France suddenly seemed to be caught between a rock and a hard place, and was thrown into this post-2001 world from which it had believed it could isolate itself during an Iraq war that was presented from the outset as the premise of a clash of civilisations. With pressure coming from all sides, France felt obliged to conform to the security excesses that were already at work across the Atlantic. It was a mistake that risked proving fatal. France’s entire and very distinctive history—above and beyond wars and revolutions—has been built on very balanced philosophical thought and on the patient construction of a state of law and a legal system which have been its strength. Today, however, there is an attempt to convince France that these foundations are not only out-of-date but weaken her in a world one again governed by arbitrary rule. Except that the rhetoric about a monopoly of violence characterising the modern State forgets one thing: the sovereign people still remains, in fine, sole custodian of legitimate violence, and sole judge of its use.