The Emergence and Implications of American Hate Crime Jurisprudence

POLITICS AND CONSTITUTIONAL concerns probably pose an insuperable barrier to passing laws punishing group libel and hate speech in the United States. ¹ However since 1980, there has been a steady movement among American states to criminalize, recriminalize, and increase punishments for intentionally injurious behaviors that are motivated by certain types of prejudice and hate. ² Most of these targeted behaviors are already covered by “generic” crime categories, but the new hate crime genre splinters, or perhaps “deconstructs,” generic crime categories, creating a new family of specialized hate crimes. In effect, American criminal jurisprudence is experiencing the kind of legal transformation that has already taken place during the past several decades in other areas of law, especially civil rights and employment.