37 Making Sense of Children Rights: Transforming the Precedents of the European Court of Human Rights Concerning Corporal Punishment of Children Haydar Burak Gemalmaz * Introduction In this study, I shall attempt to examine the question of po- tential role of supranational human rights case law standards in transforming the precedents 1 of the European Court of Human Rights (hereinafter referred to as Court or European Court) con- cerning corporal punishment of minors. Corporal punishment can be defined, for the purposes of this article, as any punishment in which physical force is used and in- tended to cause some degree of pain and discomfort with a view * LLB, Istanbul University, Faculty of Law (2001); MA (human rights and de- mocratization), University of Malta, Faculty of Laws (2002); LLM (human rights law), Istanbul University, Faculty of Law (2003). Researcher at the Faculty of Law, Istanbul University. The author is grateful for comments received from Prof. William Schabas, Dr. Kathleen Cavanaugh and Dr. Engin Şimşek. The author also would like to thank Tincel Cultural Foundation of Istanbul for its financial support. 1 Although the European Court of Human Rights is not bound to follow its pre- vious judgments in a technical sense, it does not depart, without good reason, from its own precedents in the interests of legal certainty and foreseeability. For the use of term “precedent” within the context of European Convention on Human Rights, see, D. J. Harris- M. O’Boyle- C. Warbrick, Law of the Europe- an Convention on Human Rights 18 (1995).