Text 4: The Court's Decision on the Tyrer Case

THE COURT

1. decides unanimously not to strike the case out of its list;

2. holds by six votes to one that the judicial corporal punishment inflicted on Mr. Tyrer amounted to degrading punishment within the meaning of Article 3;

3. holds unanimously that in the present case there are no local requirements within the meaning of Article 63 Para.3 which could affect the application of Article 3;

4. holds by six votes to one that the said punishment accordingly violated Article 3;

5. holds unanimously that it is not necessary to examine the question of a possible violation of Article 3 taken together with Article 14;

6. holds unanimously that it is necessary to apply Article 50 in the present case.

Done in English and French, the English text being authentic, at the Human Rights Building, Strasbourg, this twenty-fifth day of April, one thousand nine hundred and seventy-eight.

Signed: Giorgio Balladore Pallieri

President

As you can see, the Court's decision on Article 3 was not unanimous. In fact, the British judge, Sir Gerald Fitzmaurice, dissented. In his separate opinion, he explained that in his view corporal punishment, when inflicted on a juvenile, is no more degrading than any other form of punishment. He remembers that corporal punishment was quite normal when he was at school. In fact, boys preferred it to some other forms of non-violent punishment, and the boy punished did not feel degraded. For these reasons he does not consider that Tyrer's punishment amounted to degrading punishment within the meaning of Article 3.

§ Vocabulary notes

Word study

a Choose the synonyms from the box:

to dissent................................. to violate.......................................

to strike out............................ necessary.......................................

to inflict.................................. authentic.......................................

to amount to......................... normal............................................

to affect.................................. judgement......................................

b Write down a few word combinations with following words: