Britain's legal systems are occasionally lampooned as being out of touch. The arcane language and the wigs and gowns suggest a system trapped in another century. And in the case of reasonable chastisement, it could be argued that this is not so far off the mark.
Reasonable chastisement is a legal defence spawned by an English court ruling made in 1860. The defence allowed parents to "inflict moderate and reasonable" physical punishment on their children "for the purpose of correcting what is evil in the child" and was later enshrined in the Children and Young Persons Act 1933.
Victorian values
Fast-forward to the present and the defence still stands with almost as much strength as it did in the reign of Queen Victoria. For many, however, the defence's continued existence is an affront to human rights and something that encourages violence against young people.
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