ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book is intended to help remedy philosophers' persistent neglect of the corporal punishment of children, perhaps the most quotidian, frequently resorted to and widely endorsed type of violence practised in our day. It explains the corporal punishment of children cannot be vindicated by retributivism, so that its justification, if any, must be either paternalist or consequentialist in orientation. The book focuses on advancing a rights-based case against corporal punishment. It then identifies the rights engaged by corporal punishment —the rights to security of the person and to protection from degrading, cruel or torturous punishment —and submit that it makes sense to attribute them to children. The book presents the case for criminalizing corporal punishment. It then follows the author line of argument for two other types of corporal punishment, both far from extinct, corporal punishment of non-human animals and judicial corporal punishment.
