Subjects:

Human Rights and Civil Liberties

Contents:

Part I: Introduction and Background

1. Introduction, Ivan Hare , James Weinstein

2. Freedom of Speech in a Globalizing World , Dieter Grimm

3. Extreme Speech and Democracy , James Weinstein

4. The International and European Law of Freedom of Expression , Ivan Hare

5. Historical Perspectives on Extreme Speech Regulation in the United Kingdom, David Williams

6. Extreme Speech: Political Engagement as an Alternative to Legal Regulation , Maleiha Malik

Part II: Hate Speech

7. Analysing Hate Speech , Robert Post

8. Wild-West Cowboys versus Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys: Some Problems in Comparative

Approaches to Hate Speech Regulation , Eric Heinze

9. Incitement and the Regulation of Hate Speech , Wayne Sumner

10. Homophobic Speech , Erich Heinze

Part III: Speech that Promotes Religious Hatred

11. Do-it-yourself radical religious speech: how to assemble the ingredients of a binary world view , Sara Savage, Jose Liht

12. Crosses, Crescents and Sacred Cows: Criminalising Incitement to Religious Hatred in European and UK Law , Ivan Hare

13. Satire, Cartoons and Offensive Expression , Ian Cram

14. The Passionate Expression of Hate: Constitutional Protections, Emotional Harm and Comparative Law in Israel , Amnon Reichman

Part IV: Religious Speech and Expressive Conduct That Offend Secular Values

15. Religious Speech that Undermines Gender Equality , Carolyn Evans

16. Equality Denial: A New Hate Crime , Ian Leigh

17. The Veil Controversies in Europe , Dominic McGoldrick

18. Reflections on the Veil in Schools , John Finnis

Part V: Incitement to and Glorification of Terrorism

19. The UK Government's Response to the Threat of Terrorism , Lord Goldsmith, QC

20. Incitement to and Glorification of Terrorism in the United Kingdom , Eric Barendt

21. Encouraging Terrorism , Tufyal Choudhury

22. A Different Perspective on Incitement to Terrorism , Makhdoom Ali Khan

23. Comment , David Feldman

Part VI: Holocaust Denial

24. On the Internet, nobody knows you're a Nazi: Some Comparative Aspects of Holocaust Denial on the www , David Fraser

25. Holocaust Denial , Michael Whine

26. The Holocaust Denial Opinion of the German Federal Constitutional Court , Dieter Grimm

27. The Politics of Memory: the Ban and Commemoration in France , Patrick Weil

28. Comment , Robert Post

Part VII: Governmental and Self-Regulation of the Media

29. Shouting Fire: From the Nanny State to the Heckler's Veto , David Edgar

30. An American Perspective , David Bodney

31. Extreme Speech and the Media , Jacob Rowbottom

Part VIII: Conclusions

32. Extreme Speech in Comparative Perspective , Ivan Hare, James Weinstein

Appendices

A fundamental precept of all liberal democracies is a commitment to free speech. However, democracies differ fundamentally when addressing the constitutionality of laws regulating certain kinds of speech. In the United States, the commitment to free speech in the First Amendment has been held by the Supreme Court to protect the public expression of the most noxious racist ideology and hence to render unconstitutional even narrow restrictions on hate speech. In contrast, governments have been accorded considerable leeway to restrict racist and other extreme expression in almost every other democracy, including Canada, the United Kingdom and other European countries. This book considers the constitutionality of hate speech regulation, and examines how liberal democracies have adopted fundamental differences in the way they respond to racist or extreme expressions.

What accounts for the marked differences in attitude towards the constitutionality of hate speech regulation? Does hate speech regulation violate the core free speech principle constitutive of democracy? Has the traditional US position on extreme expressions justifiably not found favour elsewhere? Should, or could, other values such as the commitment to equality or dignity legitimately override the right to free speech in some circumstances? This collection of papers from some of the top free speech thinkers and writers today attempts to analyse and answer some of these fundamental questions that confront liberal democracies faced with extreme expressions.