A plea for proportionality: A reply to Yun-chien Chang and Xin Dai

Abstract After a survey of the proportionality principle and its discontents (irrationality, conceptual flaws, and bias), this article addresses the dual remedy proposed by proportionality critics, which consists in: (i) skipping the first to third prongs of the proportionality analysis (legitimate objective, suitability, and necessity) and (2) concentrating on balancing in the metric form of a cost-benefit analysis. I argue that discarding the three prongs, and thus abandoning the asymmetrical structure of the sequential proportionality analysis, would kill off the specific quality and function of rights which is to constitute a special protection that triggers the obligation to explain and justify interference. Although recent empirical studies have demonstrated that the proportionality test indeed does not deliver predictable legal outcomes, a simple cost-benefit analysis is worse. It would not secure more reliable outcomes either but only offers a sham-rationality. Assigning numbers to the goods and interests at stake cannot replace the work of a multidimensional assessment and argumentative explanation in natural language which is needed for making not only a sound, but also a transparent and thus contestable, decision. What legal life needs is a culture of justification, not a culture of calculation.