Sanity in Scotland: nanny law stayed.

• Author: Skenazy, Lenore
• Position: Named person scheme - Brief article

This summer, Scotland was poised to fully implement a law appointing a government minder to every single child born in that country. The job of this so-called "named person" would be to observe a child's upbringing, compiling reports on what she saw and swooping in if she didn't believe the parents were loving, caring, or respectful enough. A pilot version was already rolled out for some families--entirely without their knowledge in many cases.

But just in the nick of time, the U.K. Supreme Court ruled the program illegal.The 5-0 decision stated that by allowing private family information to be shared by a wide variety of public bodies without the parent's or child's consent, the program violated the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees the "right to a private and family life."...