What Is a Police Measure?

For more than two centuries the constitutional State and the principle of legality have constructed a rampart against the selfsufficiency of police power, but the events of Summer 2001 have brutally unveiled the porosity of this limit. Suddenly, an entire history reappeared, preciously instructive, supposedly past and dedicated to erudition since the fateful date, 1789. Like the revolutionaries in the constituent and legislative Assembly (1789-91), we are once again confronted by a dilemma barely modified by two centuries of juridical positivism. Is it possible to subject the activities of the police to a system of legal control, or must we rather admit that that institution possesses its own standards and that any blunders are less the sign of a specific violation of the law than the confirmation of a structural specificity proper to the police?