ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on legal principles. Importantly, all of the legal principles to be discussed in this chapter are general in the sense that they apply to various areas of free speech jurisprudence. The function of the legal principles is to give effect to the conviction that governmental and institutional authorities should be circumspect in using legalistic constraints to tackle the issue of hate speech. The chapter discusses three putatively reasonable alternatives to hate speech law: namely, government intervention to discourage hate speech short of banning it; social disapprobation, censure, and boycott of hate speech and hate speakers; and counterspeech to hate speech. Recognizing that there is a dilemma between pursuing justifiable objectives in relation to the issue of hate speech and those objectives employing only justifiable means does not entail that the correct response to that dilemma is to err on the side of striking down all hate speech law.
