But their stated policy was that they refused to intervene in the privacy of the home for minor physical altercations between husbands and wives REGARDLESS of who the perpetrator was. This is the verdict from a Supreme Court Decision in 1870 from North Carolina. I know this is long-winded but please take the time to read it:
"It will be observed that the ground upon which we have put this decision is not that the husband has the right to whip his wife much or little; but that we will not interfere with family government in trifling cases. We will no more interfere where the husband whips the wife than where the wife whips the husband; and yet we would hardly be supposed to hold that a wife has a right to whip her husband.
We will not inflict upon society the greater evil of raising the curtain upon domestic privacy, to punish the lesser evil of trifling violence. Two boys under fourteen years of age fight upon the playground, and yet the courts will take no notice of it, not for the reason that boys have the right to fight, but because the interests of society require that they should be left to the more appropriate discipline of the school room and of home. It [**10] is not true that boys have a right to fight; nor is it true that a husband has a right to whip his wife."
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