Criminalizing Hate

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.