On Friday, the Supreme Court of Canada will issue a ruling on whether it is legal for parents and others to hit children.

Today, the US Supreme Court agreed for the first time to hear a case on whether it is legal to execute them.

The United States is the only country in the world that executes minors.

I don't know how our Supreme Court will rule (appeals courts have upheld the current law that permits it), nor do I know how theirs will. I am profoundly grateful, however, that I live in a country that has moved past the point of having to decide on capital punishment for juveniles.

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Originally posted by Newbie:

It's things like this that has made Canadians fear the Canadian Alliance, its predecessor and successor so much. We see the very worst of the United States in it, and what's worse, not even the USA of today, but the USA the hard right is trying to bring create, where abortion is illegal and capital punishment is not.

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I have always found it mildly amusing (probably not the right response because lives are at stake) that the 'right' in the U.S. (and Canada) feels that the state should have no part in things like the economy, equalising social inequality, healthcare, etc. supposedly because this gives the state a 'totalitarian' power over the lives of it's citizens. However, many of them are willing to give the state the ultimate power over life arrogating it the right not only to legislate what constitutes the inception of life (anti-abortion) and extend this to all citizens, but going even further to give this state (usually painted in adversarial terms) the power to decide who lives and dies...

Moreover, it is interesting that this tendency to give the state ultimate power also seems to coincide/correlate with belief in a religious doctrine that places the power of ultimate arbitration over life and death in the hands of God. And yet, paradoxically, they would take this decision out of the hands of God and put it into the hands of mortal men. In this way, they make Gods of themselves, or at least deign to be God's appointed ministers on earth. How else can they justify the act of capital punishment?