Extreme Speech and Democracy

Christopher McCrudden, FBA, Professor of Human Rights Law, University of Oxford What are the appropriate limits to freedom of expression in societies that wish to be democratic, multi-cultural, and committed to the human rights of all? Ivan Hare and James Weinstein, a UK human rights practitioner and a US academic, have assembled a dazzling array of talent from a variety of disciplines, jurisdictions, and viewpoints to explain and debate a controversy that is intellectually complex, politically explosive, and as current as today's news. Extreme Speech and Democracy is a mine of information and argument that will be quarried for years to come. This is quite simply the most sophisticated, penetrating, and ambitious study of these issues available.

Lord Justice Laws The papers in this book bring a penetrating scholarship to the law relating to extreme speech-and to the political philosophy which is the subject's real challenge. Whether you believe in free expression warts and all, or in censorship for the sake of public tranquillity, you will find these contributions a major intellectual resource.

Conor Gearty, London School of Economics, Entertainment Law Review, Volume 20, issue 8, 2009 Compendious, thoughtful, learned and very well produced and laid out. The topic is both provocative and important, being no less than the future of our liberal culture and the task it faces in accommodating itself to the challenge of extremism without destroying all that is good about itself in the process...The book is one to be read through from start to finish or enjoyed in bite-sized chunks grabbed as the opportunity arises...The book's many contributors have various responses to the issue of controlling as well as celebrating speech but it is a tribute both to themselves and to the editors that few deny that the issue is one which needs properly to be addressed. The book is all the better as a defender of free speech (and liberal values) for taking its opponents so seriously.

Lawrence R. Douglas, Times Literary Supplement '...the contributors include many of the illustrious names in contemporary free speech scholarship, and the quality of the contributions is on the whole high"

Ivan Hare is a Barrister at Blackstone Chambers and a former Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. James Weinstein is the Amelia D. Lewis Professor of Constitutional Law at Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law, Arizona State University Contributors: Eric BarendtDavid BodneyTufyal ChoudhuryIan CramDavid EdgarCarolyn EvansJohn FinnisDavid FraserDieter GrimmIvan HareEric HeinzeIan LeighJose LihtMaleiha MalikDominic McGoldrickRobert PostAmnon ReichmanJacob RowbottomSara SavageWayne SumnerPatrick WeilJames WeinsteinMichael WhineDavid Williams

Foreword by Ronald Dworkin; General Introduction: Free Speech, Democracy, and the Suppression of Extreme Speech Past and Present; PART I: INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND; 1. Freedom of Speech in a Globalized World; 2. Extreme Speech, Public Order, and Democracy: Lessons from The Masses; 3. Extreme Speech under International and Regional Human Rights Standards; 4. An Overview of American Free Speech Doctrine and its Application to Extreme Speech; 5. Hate Speech in the United Kingdom: An Historical Overview; 6. Extreme Speech and Liberalism; PART II: HATE SPEECH; 7. Hate Speech; 8. Autonomy and Hate Speech; 9. Hate Speech, Public Discourse, and the First Amendment; 10. Wild-West Cowboys versus Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys: Some Problems in Comparative Approaches to Hate Speech; 11. Incitement and the Regulation of Hate Speech in Canada: A Philosophical Analysis; 12. Hate Speech, Extreme Speech, and Collective Defamation in French Law; 13. Towards Improved Law and Policy on 'Hate Speech'- The 'Clear and Present Danger' Test in Hungary; 14. Cumulative Jurisprudence and Hate Speech: Sexual Orientation and Analogies to Disability, Age, and Obesity; PART III: INCITEMENT TO RELIGIOUS HATRED AND RELATED TOPICS; 15. Blasphemy and Incitement to Religious Hatred: Free Speech Dogma and Doctrine; 16. The Danish Cartoons, Offensive Expression, and Democratic Legitimacy; 17. Criminalizing Religiously Offensive Satire: Free Speech, Human Dignity, and Comparative Law; PART IV: RELIGIOUS SPEECH AND EXPRESSIVE CONDUCT THAT OFFEND SECULAR VALUES; 18. Religious Speech that Undermines Gender Equality; 19. Homophobic Speech, Equality Denial, and Religious Expression; 20. Extreme Religious Dress: Perspectives on Veiling Controversies; 21. Endorsing Discrimination between Faiths: A Case of Extreme Speech?; PART V: INCITEMENT TO AND GLORIFICATION OF TERRORISM; 22. Incitement to, and Glorification of, Terrorism; 23. The Terrorism Act 2006: Discouraging Terrorism; 24. Radical Religious Speech: the Ingredients of a Binary World View; PART VI: HOLOCAUST DENIAL; 25. 'On the Internet, Nobody Knows You're a Nazi': Some Comparative Aspects of Holocaust Denial on the WWW; 26. Expanding Holocaust Denial and Legislation Against It; 27. The Holocaust Denial Decision of the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany; 28. The Politics of Memory: Bans and Commemorations; PART VII: GOVERNMENTAL AND SELF-REGULATION OF THE MEDIA; 29. Shouting Fire: From the Nanny State to the Heckler's Veto: The New Censorship and How to Counter It; 30. Extreme Speech and American Press Freedoms; 31. Extreme Speech and the Democratic Functions of the Mass Media