ABSTRACT
There has been much debate in the US legal system around the role of the state in the regulation of ‘hate speech’. At the heart of these debates is the conflict between the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the US Constitution. The former provides for freedom of speech and the latter for freedom from harm from the conduct of others. The main concern of the courts is to establish whether hate speech is a form of conduct. If so, government intervention to restrict it is legitimated. However, if it is established that the hate speech in question is only a matter of words, then it becomes an expression of free speech and intervention to restrict it would contravene the First Amendment. It would seem then that speech act theory could provide a useful resource through which to argue for the regulation of hate speech. The grounds would be that it exerts a performative force which constitutes an injury and therefore should be regarded as conduct, or action, rather than the mere expression of a viewpoint.
