rights.20 An identified “new aspect of the principle of proportionality”,21 described in the context of the massive reduction of social welfare protections across Europe in the wake of the global financial crisis, delinks proportionality as principle and proportionality analysis as a structured doctrine, and connects the principle of proportionality within broader standards of reasonableness. In this chapter, I examine the relationship between reasonableness review and proportionality within the context of economic and social rights. Both standards hew closely to the ideal of a “culture of justification”. 22 Both too set out a measured assessment of the principle of proportionality, which we might summarize as the view that “the graver the impact of the decision upon the individual affected by it, the more substantial the justification that will be required.”23 Yet they do so under methodologies that are critically different. In outlining the differences of the two approaches, I present the developing approach to reasonableness review in South African constitutional law in Part I. The choice of this jurisdiction is pertinent as an early, sophisticated and influential 20 Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights art. 8(4)), G.A. Res. 63/117, U.N. Doc. A/RES/63/117 (Mar. 5, 2009) [hereinafter OP-ICESCR]. See I.D.G. v. Spain, Communication No. 2/2014, para 14. (UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights first answer to a complaint under the Optional Protocol, concluding that the Spanish Court did not take all reasonable measures to adequately notify the complainant of the impending application for mortgage enforcement). 21 Xenophon Contiades & Alkmene Fotiadou, Social Rights in the Age of Proportionality: Global Economic Crisis and Constitutional Litigation, 10 INT’L J. CONSTITUTIONAL L. 660 (2012); David Bilchitz, Socio-economic Rights, Economic Crisis, and Legal Doctrine: A Rejoinder to Xenophon Contiades and Alkmene Fotiadou, 12 INT’L J. CONSTITUTIONAL L.710 (2014). 22 Etienne Mureinik, Beyond a Charter of Luxuries: Economic Rights in the Constitution, 8 S. AFR. J. HUM. RTS. 464 (1992). 23 For reference to this well-cited formula, from much comparative case law, see, e.g., Michael Taggart, Proportionality, Deference, Wednesbury, 2008 N.Z. LAW REV., 423, 433; Compare with the Law of Balancing expressed by Alexy: “The greater the degree of non-satisfaction of, or detriment to, one principle, the greater must be the importance of satisfying the other”: ALEXY, supra note 7, at 102. 4