You Wait for Ages Then Two Come Along at Once: An Analysis of Ziegler v DPP [2021] UKSC 23

The Supreme Court judgment in DPP v Ziegler adds to our understanding of how proportionality plays out within the UK’s human rights-infused public law in two distinct ways. First, the test that appellate courts should apply when revisiting lower court determinations of whether decision-makers X did/did not act proportionately: in short, how far should they defer? The second was the scope of Convention-based proportionality ‘lawful/reasonable excuse’ defences when disruptive protesters face criminal charges. This piece evaluates those two aspects of Ziegler in light too of the Supreme Court judgment in Safe Access Zones Reference (SAZ) from Northern Ireland a year later on.