Freedom of Conscience, Belief and Religion | The Christian Education Case

The issue in this case was whether Christian Education Schools that were set up specifically on the principle of ‘spare the rod, spoil the child,’ were entitled to a religious exemption from a general prohibition on the use of corporal punishment in schools introduced into a new Schools Act. Having been asked to write the lead judgment for the Court, Justice Sachs reflects on the way in which two competing experiences of his own could have unconsciously affected his decision. On the one hand, he had been unjustly caned at school by a sadistic schoolmaster, and years later when being held in solitary confinement in a cell at the back of a Magistrates Court, he had heard the desperate cries of juveniles as they were being caned. On the other hand, hard choices he had had to make as a juvenile on questions of religion had imprinted on him the conviction that the fundamental right of freedom of conscience was possibly the most precious right that any human being could have. In the end, he held that although religious believers could not themselves carve out exemptions from a general law, the state should do everything it could in a spirit of reasonable accommodation to prevent believers from having to make a choice between adherence to their faith and the law. Given the constitutional duty on the State to reduce violence from public or private sources, the inclusion of Christian Education schools in the prohibition was not unreasonable, at the same time, subject to the common law limits on chastisement, the parents were not prohibited from continuing with their beliefs at home.