State Actors Beating Children: A Call For Judicial Relief
By Deana Pollard-Sacks

Abstract:
Controversy over public school corporal punishment is at an all-time high.
On August 20, 2008, the Human Rights Watch/ACLU brought public attention to
the issue by releasing its report on corporal punishment of children in
American public schools. Lawsuits challenging this state action on
constitutional grounds continue to be filed, as advocates seeking to ban
school paddling refuse to accept that beating students is constitutionally
permissible, despite their repeated losses in the federal courts, and the
Supreme Court's refusal to consider the issue again on June 23, 2008.
Ignoring the uproar, nearly half of the United States continue to employ
corporal punishment in public schools despite compelling evidence that it is
counterproductive to state educational objectives and creates serious
physical, emotional, and other risks to children. This article considers
existing jurisprudence relative to public school corporal punishment and
argues that the current majority rule is constitutionally infirm, and that
no court has ever engaged a meaningful means-to-ends analysis in accordance
with Meyer v. Nebraska and its progeny. Based on scientific and other
evidence regarding the inefficacy of corporal punishment and its dangerous
consequences for schoolchildren, this article concludes that it is a
legislative deprivation of substantive due process and a denial of equal
protection of the laws protecting all other citizens from assault and
battery. In addition, because children are excluded from protection from
physical punishment based on inaccurate, historical assumptions regarding
their innate character, laws authorizing corporal punishment of children
only are unconstitutional under a legislative motive equal protection
analysis.

Read the article:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1242622
publication pending UC Davis Law Review, April or May, 2009.