{"id":167,"date":"2005-02-25T23:40:35","date_gmt":"2005-02-25T23:40:35","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2005-02-25T23:40:35","modified_gmt":"2005-02-25T23:40:35","slug":"r-v-secretary-of-state-for-education-and-employment-and-others-ex-parte-williamson-2005-hl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/?p=167","title":{"rendered":"R v Secretary of State for Education and Employment and others ex parte Williamson [2005] HL"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>[Assault &#8211; the right of parents in loco parenti to physically chastise their children]<\/strong> <br \/>D the government. The Education Act 1996 totally bans corporal punishment in all schools. The claimants were teachers and parents whose children attended schools which were established specifically to provide a Christian education that was based on Biblical observance and this meant the use of corporal punishment on a limited basis as part of their beliefs. The claimants argued that the ban was incompatible with the Human Rights Act 1998 and their rights under Article 9 of the Human Rights Convention; their right to an education of their choice. <br \/><strong><br \/>Held<\/strong>: Lord Nicholls: &#8220;Parliament was bound to respect the claimants&#8217; beliefs in this regard, but was entitled to decide that manifestation of these beliefs in practice was not in the best interests of children.&#8221; &#8220;Parliament was entitled to decide that, contrary to the claimants&#8217; submissions, a universal ban is preferable to a selective ban which exempts schools where the parents or teachers have an ideological belief in the efficacy and desirability of a mild degree of carefully-controlled corporal punishment.&#8221; Lady Hale said &#8220;This is &#8230; a case about children [y]et there has been no-one here \u2026 to speak on behalf of the children.&#8221; &#8220;The battle has been fought on ground selected by the adults. This has clouded and over-complicated what should have been a simple issue. &#8221; <\/p>\n<p><strong>C lost<\/strong>. <br \/>Whole case <a href=\"http:\/\/www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk\/pa\/ld200405\/ldjudgmt\/jd050224\/will-1.htm\">here <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[Assault &#8211; the right of parents in loco parenti to physically chastise their children] D the government. The Education Act 1996 totally bans corporal punishment in all schools. The claimants were teachers and parents whose children attended schools which were established specifically to provide a Christian education that was based on Biblical observance and this [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}