Campbell and Cosans v. United Kingdom (1982) 4 EHRR 293
Citation: Campbell and Cosans v. United Kingdom (1982) 4 EHRR 293
Rule of thumb: Is the use of corporal punishment (the belt) allowed in schools? No, this is a violation of the right against degrading treatment. ‘Troublemakers’ in schools must be subject to discipline which follows a clearly set out philosophy.
Judgment:
The facts of this case were that 2 pupils were suspended when they refused to accept the use of corporal punishment in schools. The Court held that schools are educating people with knowledge as well as instilling values in them – schools must therefore have reasonable philosophical values in places and also respect the reasonable philosophical convictions of pupils and their parents, and that failure to have reasonable philosophical values in place or failure to respect reasonable philosophical values of others constitutes a violation of the human right to education, ‘The education of children is the whole process whereby, in any society, adults endeavour to transmit their beliefs, culture and other values to the young, whereas teaching or instruction refers in particular to the transmission of knowledge and to intellectual development … and the process whereby a school seeks to achieve the object for which it was established, including the development and moulding of the character and mental powers of its pupils… Article 2 (P1-2) constitutes a whole that is dominated by its first sentence, the right set out in the second sentence being an adjunct of the fundamental right to education... There is also a substantial difference between the legal basis of the two claims, for one concerns a right of a parent and the other a right of a child. The issue arising under the first sentence is therefore not absorbed by the finding of a violation of the second. The right to education guaranteed by the first sentence of Article 2 (P1-2) by its very nature calls for regulation by the State, but such regulation must never injure the substance of the right nor conflict with other rights enshrined in the Convention or its Protocols’ (at 33-41)
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