DEUT1079 Courts may impose lashes for trespasses of the law, but in doing so, even they had to take due care to preserve the dignity of God and of the culprit, who is, still, God's human creature. (For the Torah's rescriction on the number of lashes, see Deuteronomy 25:3). Nowadays, when Jews live under the jurisdiction of national legal systems that treat Jews as equal citizens and do not carve out separate civil and criminal authority for Jewish courts over Jews, even Jewish courts no longer have the authority to beat others; individuals have even less authorization to do so. Indeed, the Rabbis took the notion of the integrity of the individual so far as to say that those who slander others (and certainly those who cause them physical injury) are as though they had denied the existence of God. J. Pe'ah 1:1. Conververely, Rabbi Eliezer said, "Let your fellow's honor be as dear to you as your own." M. Avot 2:15.