So you think punching a child was considered to be reasonable force before the anti-smacking law?

The best places to search these cases out are the Brookers and LexisNexis NZ databases which of course are not publicly available – you have to subscribe to get access. I have access by virtue of being a law student and I have searched these databases and I can only find 34 reported cases where s59 was raised as a defence and of these very few raised it successfully and of these it is hard to find many that are dubious decisions – 1 or 2 of the older cases – like back in the 50's and 60's maybe.

The majority appear to have been decided correctly – people attempted to raise the defence and the court said "yeah right" and convicted them for child abuse or else it found that it was not proven who abused the child – the evidence was weak – or it found that in fact the force used was reasonable (and it was).

I did offer above and directly to the Vote No people, to create a page a table showing how many s59 cases there have ever been reported in NZ, the verdicts in each and a link to the pdf of each reported case. No one bit so I didn't do it. Now semester break is over and the vote officially begins tomorrow I'm not sure I have time – if someone wanted to help me maybe… Andy?

Do you have examples of a court cases where parent abuse their child, use smacking as defence in court, and got away with no charges? Are there examples of court cases where the new smacking law would have given different results?

ie. very rarely and in exceptional circumstnces…. I won't bother to spell out why this is important.  Think about it.

Saying, "Johny do as I say or go to your room" or "if you hit your sister with that toy I will confiscate it for the rest of the day" don't involving reasoning either.

Sorry.. but who exactly decides when this line is crossed?  Me? You? The guy with a fist like a ham and a two year old daughter covered in bruises

Actually courts make decisions like this all the time, a person is allowed to use "reasonable force" is self defence. One can ask "who is to decide whats reasonable?, you me, the guy who bashes a guy with a baseball bat because his neighbour spat at him?" etc, but such questions do not alter the fact that laws drawing such lines are just.

 Moreover, the principle that the state doesn't have arbitrary power over its citizens might be worth spending millions defending.

and besides the state does restrict what clothing we can wear.  We laugh at countries where women are required to cover al of their body parts – yet in our society if you go out inpublic withoout state defined parts of your body covered you will be arrested.  Do you think the state should be able to impose minimum amounts of clothing? I agree, but I did not say the state could not impose minimal standards on clothing I said they could not prohibit people from wearing a shirt purely because its red. Laws about public nudity etc are based on the idea that certain practises are immoral, so again the issue is wether corporal punishment is immoral not wether their are alternatives to it.  

It should really be an empirical issue.  If longitudal studies showed that smacking really does have negative effects on a persons life would you then be in favour of banning this practice.  And the same question t those opposed:  If studies showed that smacked had a positive effect would you change your stance? The problem is that empirical data alone can't answer moral questions, suppose you can show that corporal punishment has certain effects, first one can't say they are negative or positive without making a value judgement of some sort. second, you can't infer what you ought to do unless you assume some principle such as "do not do anything with negative consquences" . Third there are also issues about what you mean by "negative consquences" permitting people to drive cars has negative consquences for example yet its not unjust to do so.

I will say this: If it could be shown that administering corporal punishment caused demonstrable harm on par with other abusive practises, then I think that would provide a good case against corporal punishment

Sorry – that was pretty offensive.  But sometimes syllogisms are less effective than a dose of reality.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxiYobjbeO4&feature=channel_page

Namely, that the current law doesn't discriminate between forms of punishment imposed by parents- all forms of correction that bend the child's will to the parent's, by a look, gesture, words, by detaining them, moving them, smacking them, or any conceivable action for the purpose of correction is criminal assault by virtue of application of the s2 definition of assault in the Crimes Act.

I think we should be arguing about the fact that the only legal right we have with regard to correcting our children's behaviour is to fantasise about doing so- to act on that fantasy in any way shape or form makes us criminals.