Blogging on flogging

In today’s late afternoon seminar, I treat one of my favorite topics in comparative family law: domestic violence (parent to child and spouse to spouse). This kind of a statement must raise eyebrows, all the more so since I have also spent many years working with law students to provide representation to parents (here in Madison) who abuse their children. What kind of a person likes to talk about violence and enjoys working with abusive parents?

“Enjoys” is perhaps not the best term, though if applied to the process of teaching, then yes, I do enjoy it in this particular field. Rarely are you given the opportunity in teaching law to create so easily a comprehensive diagram where international legal instruments, grass roots efforts, legal activism in the courts, political transformations, etc etc all have their cell, exploding, imploding, exerting influence, being shaped in turn, all in fascinating and not always predictable ways by the others. And, it is all the more captivating (for discussion purposes), because whereas most in class will overtly align themselves on the side that condemns domestic abuse of the spouse to spouse kind, there are always hold-outs (sometimes it’ll be the majority of the class) who believe in slapping the kid who misbehaves. Herein lies an opportunity to bring in the role of historical legal developments that can help explain our confused posture on the topic of physical punishment.

The American legal system has such an idiosyncratic approach to violence, far different than that in Great Britain, which in turn is completely at odds with the Swedish approach. A look at the new Russian Family Code, and its comparison to Swedish or American Family Codes or the South African or Namibian Criminal Codes (the latter two prohibit the physical punishment of juveniles, but only in criminal proceedings) brings a relevance to comparative analyses that makes, one hopes, converts of us all.