ON HISTORICAL AND THEORETICAL ORIGINS OF THE PROPORTIONALITY PRINCIPLE

A contribution towards a prospective comprehensive debate on proportionality

Abstract

During the second half of the XXth century, the
proportionality principle gradually emerged as an omnipresent and
important instrument of judicial interpretation, in all sorts of contexts.
In legal and political science, the term proportionality had traditionally
been linked with quite different concepts, such as the proportional as
opposed to the majoritarian electoral model.
The core meaning of proportionality
, developed mainly in
mathematics and aesthetics, provides the basics of the concept of
proportionality as a political and juridical principle as well.
Proportionality is an attribute, a characteristic of a part with respect to
the other parts or to the whole. It always involves a relation between
two or more variables. This relation can be of convenience, logic or
measure (Delpérée, 503).