<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>Should democracies punish hate speech? Eric Heinze, Professor of Law and Humanities at Queen Mary, University of London, has written an important new book on this subject, Hate Speech and Democratic Citizenship. At the center of Heinze’s book is a revolutionary idea: Instead of debating whether democracies per se can or cannot legitimately ban hate speech (which assumes all democracies are the same), we should only condemn hate speech as illegitimate in those democracies that are longstanding, stable and prosperous. In this essay, I show how Heinze’s idea frees the debate over hate speech regulation from the Europe vs. America dichotomy that has haunted it for years, while carrying a special poignancy for the United States in the age of Trump.</p></abstract>

Should democracies punish hate speech? Eric Heinze, Professor of Law and Humanities at Queen Mary, University of London, has written an important new book on this subject, Hate Speech and Democratic Citizenship. At the center of Heinze’s book is a revolutionary idea: Instead of debating whether democracies per se can or cannot legitimately ban hate speech (which assumes all democracies are the same), we should only condemn hate speech as illegitimate in those democracies that are longstanding, stable and prosperous. In this essay, I show how Heinze’s idea frees the debate over hate speech regulation from the Europe vs. America dichotomy that has haunted it for years, while carrying a special poignancy for the United States in the age of Trump.

Hate Speech, Democratic Legitimacy and the Age of Trump

International and Comparative Law Review

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Should democracies punish hate speech? Eric Heinze, Professor of Law and Humanities at Queen Mary, University of London, has written an important new book on...

Hate Speech, Democratic Legitimacy and the Age of Trump

Published Online: Feb 09, 2018

Page range: 239 - 253

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/iclr-2018-0011

Keywords
Eric Heinze, Hate Speech, Democracy, Legitimacy, Trump

© 2018 Rob Kahn, published by De Gruyter Open

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Hate Speech, Democratic Legitimacy and the Age of Trump

Published Online: Feb 09, 2018

Page range: 239 - 253

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/iclr-2018-0011

KeywordsEric Heinze, Hate Speech, Democracy, Legitimacy, Trump

© 2018 Rob Kahn, published by De Gruyter Open

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Keywords
Eric Heinze, Hate Speech, Democracy, Legitimacy, Trump