Have other countries ended this defence to assaults on children for correction?
Yes. Sweden removed a defence to assault similar to ours from its criminal code in 1957; Finland in 1969; Norway 1972; Austria 1977; Denmark 1985; and Israel in 2000. The Italian Supreme Court declared its law allowing corporal punishment of children unconstitutional in 1996. To bring these changes more clearly to the attention of the public, some of these countries also amended their civil child protection legislation to state that no child shall be subjected to corporal punishment. Educationalcampaigns linked to these amendments brought this message to public attention. More recently, Germany, Latvia, Croatia and Cyprus, Iceland, Romania, Ukraine, Hungary, Bulgaria, Greece, and The Netherlands have amended their civil child protection acts to state that corporal punishment should not be used. In 2007, New Zealand repealed its criminal code defence allowing corporal punishment of children: the first Commonwealth country to do so. Its defence was almost identical to our s. 43. Corporal
