In the UK and Canada, recent years have seen the public, politicians, and courts preoccupied with questions of national security. This chapter argues that within an emerging security culture, the British and Canadian executives can manipulate political discourse about the existence and extent of public emergency, in order to shape the way their respective national legal systems both to maintain the rule of law and implement international human rights norms. Emergency discourse and a resulting paradigm shift also highlight the relative institutional competencies of the Crown and courts to protect public safety and human rights. Courts can consciously promote an opposing discourse of rights that maintain tension between individual rights and public security, and therefore hopefully prevents the permanent "securitization" of the constitution.  Keywords: Canada, Crown, emergency discourse, international human rights norms, national security, paradigm, UK