Parental punishment found excessive in Canada

Thanks to this humorous post from Eugene Volokh about a hard-to-believe true story, I found press reports here and here about a Canadian superiour court ruling about excessive parental punishment.  Here are the basics from this press account:

First, the father banned his 12-year-old daughter from going online after she posted photos of herself on a dating site.  Then she allegedly had a row with her stepmother, so the father said his girl couldn’t go on a school trip.  The girl took the matter to the court — and won what lawyers say was an unprecedented judgment.  Madam Justice Suzanne Tessier of the Quebec Superior Court ruled on Friday that the father couldn’t discipline his daughter by barring her from the school trip….

Lucie Fortin, the lawyer representing the 12-year-old, said the judge found that depriving the girl of the school trip was an excessive punishment.  She said the girl has already been forbidden to use the Internet and her father also punished her by cancelling her participation in an extracurricular event.

The trip, a three-day outing within Quebec supervised by teachers and volunteer parents, marked her Grade 6 class graduation from elementary school. “She’s becoming a big girl. … It’s a unique event in her life,” Ms. Fortin said. The girl’s parents are divorced.  Her father has legal custody but for the past month she has lived with her mother, Ms. Fortin said.

Before Judge Tessier, she cited Sections 159 and 604 of the Quebec Civil Code, which allow minors in some circumstances to initiate court proceedings relating to the exercise of parental authority.

So, let’s review.  In the United States, the Supreme Court and lower courts regularly dismiss legal challenges brought by juveniles (and adults) that claim that decades or life in prison constitutes excessive punishment.  But, north of the border, courts are apparently eager to declare a parental punishment in the form of grounding a 12-year-old girl to be excessive.  Hmmmm.  (I think I will call this the Hannah Montana doctrine: sing it with me closet Hannah fans, “Let’s go, GNO.”)