The main case there was Campbell and Cosans (which WAS driven by STOPP), a Scottish tawse case which, when it got to Strasbourg, in fact failed in terms of Article 3 of the Convention (“inhuman or degrading treatment” — “Cruel or unusual”, by the way, are words that don’t feature in the European Convention, they are in the US Constitution or possibly an amendment thereto) but succeeded in terms of Article 2 of the first Protocol to the Convention, which talks about the right to education in conformity with parents’ philosophical convictions. The whole thing revolved around parental choice, it was nothing to do with whether the nature of the punishment itself contravened the Convention.
Memories of Corporal Punishment19
