Criminalizing Hate

Citation

Duff RA & Marshall SE (2018) Criminalizing Hate. In: Brudholm T & Schepelern Johansen B (eds.) Hate, Politics, Law: Critical Perspectives on Combating Hate. Studies in Penal Theory and Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 115-149. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/hate-politics-law-9780190465544?cc=gb&lang=en&

Abstract
This chapter explores the role that criminal law might play in combating “hatred,” in particular whether and why we might appropriately criminalize “hatred.” After sketching some salient features of a liberal, democratic republic (as the kind of polity in which we can aspire to live, and whose citizens can be expected to be committed to combating “hatred”), we explain why a certain kind of “hatred” should concern members of such a polity, as a distinctive civic vice manifested in a distinctive kind of civic wrong. We then discuss the limited but significant role that criminal law can play, in principle, in responding to such hatred, and say a little about the difficulties involved in turning “in principle” into “in practice,” particularly those concerning offense definitions.

Keywords
hatred; criminal law; liberal democracy; enacting hate; hate speech