ABSTRACT
The key requirement for advocates who are presenting Human Rights Act arguments is the adoption of a structured approach, which enables the courts to identify the constituent elements of an application or of a defence. The issue of proportionality is likely to arise in many aspects of Human Rights Act arguments. It will often be clear that there has been an interference with a qualified right (such as Art 8), so that the focus will be whether that interference was for a permitted reason, whether it was prescribed by law and, most contentiously, whether it was necessary in a democratic society. It is this last element that introduces the concept of proportionality – a concept of some antiquity1 whose exact boundaries remain curiously ill-defined.
