This chapter is this book’s conceptual framework chapter. It engages extensively with securitization studies and argue for a variant of securitization theory that takes a particular stance on three contested themes: 1) the point when securitization is satisfied (i.e. does it have to involve simply performative/ securitizing language or also policy action); 2) the nature and significance of the audience; and 3) the role and nature of the exception, and whether or not securitization needs to involve exceptional measures. The chapter then moves onto the method by which principles of just securitization and desecuritization are being derived. It begins by showing why discourse ethics is rejected in favour of an approach that borrows heavily from moral, analytical and political philosophy’s dominant method: wide reflective equilibrium. I then demonstrate how the just war tradition serves as an entry point into the uncharted territory of just securitization as it allows us to reflect on the kind of considerations relevant for a corresponding theory.