CORPORAL PUNISHMENT

CORPORAL PUNISHMENT

Physical punishment, as distinguished from pecuniary punishment or a fine; any kind of punishment inflicted on the body.

Corporal punishment arises in two main
contexts: as a method of discipline in schools
and as a form of punishment for committing a
crime.

Corporal punishment, usually in the form of
paddling, though practiced in U.S. schools since
the American Revolution, was only sanctioned
by the U.S. Supreme Court in the late 1970s. In
Ingraham v.Wright, 430 U.S. 651, 97 S. Ct. 1401,
51 L. Ed. 2d 711 (1977), students from a Florida
junior high school had received physical punishment,
including paddling so severe that one student
had required medical treatment. The
plaintiffs, parents of students who had been disciplined,
brought suit against the school district,
alleging that corporal punishment in public
schools constituted CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENT
in violation of the EIGHTH AMENDMENT
to the U.S. Constitution. The plaintiffs
also maintained that the FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT
required DUE PROCESS before corporal
punishment could be administered.

The Court rejected the Eighth Amendment
claim, holding that the prohibition against cruel
and unusual punishment was designed to protect
persons who were convicted of crimes, not
students who were paddled as a form of discipline.
The Court also held that although corporal
punishment did implicate a constitutionally
protected liberty interest, traditional COMMON
LAW remedies, such as filing an action in TORT,
were “fully adequate to afford due process.”
Thus, the Court concluded, teachers could use
“reasonable but not excessive” corporal punishment
to discipline students.

Since the Court’s decision in Ingraham, corporal punishment in the schools has been challenged on other constitutional grounds. In Hall v. Tawney, 621 F.2d 607 (4th Cir. 1980), a gradeschool
student from West Virginia alleged that
she had been severely injured after she had been struck repeatedly with a hard, rubber paddle by her teacher while the school principal had looked on. She filed suit against the school,
claiming that her Eighth Amendment rights had
been violated and that she had been deprived of
her procedural due process rights. She further
alleged that she had been denied SUBSTANTIVE
DUE PROCESS under 42 U.S.C.A. § 1983, which
provides that a civil action may be brought for a
deprivation of constitutional rights. While the
case was pending, the U.S. Supreme Court
handed down its decision in Ingraham, thus
foreclosing the plaintiff ’s Eighth Amendment
and procedural due process claims.

Addressing the remaining constitutional
claim, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth
Circuit held that excessive corporal punishment
in public schools could violate a student’s constitutional
right to substantive due process and
thus subject school officials to liability under
§ 1983. The standard to be applied, the court
ruled, was whether the force applied were to
cause injury so severe and disproportionate to
the need for it and were “ so inspired by malice
or sadism rather than a merely careless or
unwise excess of zeal that it amounted to a brutal
and inhuman abuse of official power literally
shocking to the conscience.” The case was
remanded to the lower court so that the plaintiff
’s § 1983 claim could be tried in light of the
Fourth Circuit’s ruling. Other federal appeals
courts have since followed Hall in corporal punishment
cases involving schools, although the
high standard has proved very difficult for plaintiffs
to meet.

In cases where plaintiffs have been successful,
the conduct of the educator is often rather
extreme. In Neal ex rel. Neal v. Fulton County
Board of Education, 229 F.3d 1069 (11th Cir.
2000), a high-school teacher and football coach,
while breaking up a fight, struck one of the
fighting students with a metal weight lock. The
blow to the student was so severe that it knocked
his eyeball out of its socket. The Eleventh Circuit
Court of Appeals found that because the punishment
inflicted by the coach had been intentional,
and obviously excessive, and that it had
created a foreseeable risk of serious injury, the
student had stated a claim upon which he could
recover. Many other cases, on the other hand,
have held in favor of educators and school districts
because the students who brought suit
could not prove the elements necessary to hold
the defendants liable.

As a result of limited success in the courts,
opponents of corporal punishment have turned
to the political process and have worked to persuade
state legislatures to outlaw the use of corporal
punishment in schools. Scientific studies
over the past decade have demonstrated that
corporal punishment contributes to such behavioral
problems as increased anger, aggression,
tolerance for violence, and lower self-esteem.
Partially as a result of these studies, a growing
number of groups, including the NATIONAL
EDUCATION ASSOCIATION, the American Academy
of Pediatrics, the American Academy of
Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, and the AMERICAN
BAR ASSOCIATION, disfavor corporal punishment
and have sought to ban it in public
schools. These LOBBYING efforts have proven
successful: Only about half of the states continue
to practice corporal punishment, whereas the
other half specifically prohibit it by state statute
or regulation.

In California, for example, state law provides
that “[]no person employed by . . . a public
school shall inflict, or cause to be inflicted corporal
punishment upon a pupil” (Cal. Educ.
Code § 49001 [West 1996]). But despite the
trend against permitting corporal punishment
in schools, public opinion is split on the issue: In
a 1995 Scripps Howard News Service Poll, 49
percent of those surveyed favored corporal punishment,
and 46 percent opposed it.

Like corporal punishment in schools, physical
punishment for committing a crime also
dates back to the American Revolution. The
CONTINENTAL CONGRESS allowed floggings on
U.S. warships, and confinement in stocks and
public hangings were common. Gradually,
imprisonment and other forms of rehabilitation
began to replace corporal punishment, largely because of the work of reformers who campaigned against its use on convicts and advocated
for improved prison conditions. Most
states eventually abolished public floggings and
other forms of physical punishment for crimes,
but in some jurisdictions “whipping laws”
remained in effect until the early 1970s. In addition,
courts have held that corporal punishment
in prisons can take a variety of forms (e.g.,
whipping, deprivation of food, and placement in
restraints) and is prohibited by the Eighth
Amendment.

The mid-1990s case of a U.S. teenager convicted
of VANDALISM in a foreign country
revived a long-dormant debate over whether
criminals should be corporally punished. In
May 1994, Michael Fay was sentenced to six
strokes with a rattan cane and four months in
jail for painting graffiti on parked cars and for
other acts of vandalism he had committed while
living in Singapore. The case drew immediate
international attention. Many U.S. citizens—
including President BILL CLINTON, who
appealed to the government of Singapore for
clemency—were outraged by the sentence.
Despite the intervention of the U.S. government
and HUMAN RIGHTS groups, the punishment
was eventually carried out, although the number
of strokes was reduced to four.

In the wake of the publicity surrounding the
Fay matter, polls indicated that a surprising
number of U.S. citizens supported the sentence.
Unconvinced that current penalties provide a
sufficient deterrent, many believed that the
long-standing prohibition against physical punishment
should be reconsidered, at least with
respect to juvenile offenders. In some states, lawmakers
introduced legislation to provide for
corporal punishment of juveniles who were convicted
of certain crimes. In California, for example,
a bill requiring paddling of juvenile graffiti
vandals was proposed (1995 California Assembly
Bill No. 7, California 1995–96 Regular Session).

Proposed measures in other states have not
limited the use of corporal punishment to juveniles.
In Tennessee, for instance, a bill was introduced
in 1995 providing for floggings for
property crimes such as BURGLARY, vandalism,
and trespassing. The measure would further
provide for the punishment to be administered
by the county sheriff on the courthouse steps of
the county where the crime was committed.
According to the bill’s sponsor, “People that follow
a life of crime generally get started in the
area of property crimes . . . if you knew they were
going to . . . whale the living daylights out of you,
you might think twice about it.” This bill, like
other measures proposed for physically punishing
juveniles, failed to pass the state legislature.

In response to renewed calls for physical
punishment for criminals, critics have argued
that such measures may meet a “revenge” need
on the part of the public but that they do nothing
in the long term to address the deeper issue
of why crime occurs. Groups such as the AMERICAN
CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION, in lobbying against
corporal punishment, maintain that state legislators,
law enforcement personnel, criminologists,
and social scientists should instead direct
their efforts to what can be done to prevent
crime in the first place.

FURTHER READINGS
Bloom, Scott. 1995. “Spare the Rod, Spoil the Child? A Legal
Framework for Recent Corporal Punishment Proposals.”
Golden Gate University Law Review 25.
Dayton, John. 1994. “Corporal Punishment in Public
Schools: The Legal and Political Battle Continues.” Education
Law Reporter 89.
Parkinson, Jerry R. 1994. “Federal Court Treatment of Corporal
Punishment in Public Schools: Jurisprudence
That Is Literally Shocking to the Conscience.” South
Dakota Law Review 39.

CROSS-REFERENCES
Juvenile Law.