Proportionality: Constitutional Rights and their Limitations

Cambridge Studies in Constitutional Law

by Aharon Barak

Having identified proportionality as the main tool for limiting constitutional rights, Aharon Barak explores its four components (proper purpose, rational connection, necessity and proportionality stricto sensu) and discusses the relationships between proportionality and reasonableness and between courts and legislation. He goes on to analyse the concept of deference and to consider the main arguments against the use of proportionality (incommensurability and irrationality). Alternatives to proportionality are compared and future developments of proportionality are suggested.

638 pages, Paperback

First published December 15, 2011

About the author

Aharon Barak (Hebrew: אהרן ברק) is an Israeli lawyer and jurist who served as President of the Supreme Court of Israel from 1995 to 2006. Prior to this, Barak served as a Justice of the Supreme Court of Israel from 1978 to 1995, and before this as Attorney General of Israel from 1975 to 1978.

Barak was born with the name of Erik Brick in Kaunas, Lithuania in 1936. Having survived the Holocaust, he and his family later immigrated to Mandatory Palestine in 1947. He studied law, international relations and economics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and obtained his Bachelor of Laws in 1958. Between 1958 and 1960, he was drafted into the Israeli military.

From 1974 to 1975, Barak was dean of the law faculty of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Barak is currently a law professor at Reichman University in Herzliya, and has taught at institutions including Yale Law School, Central European University, Georgetown University Law Center, and the University of Toronto Faculty of Law.

Reviews

[Michal Ján Sallem · Rating 5 out of 5]

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