Abstract
In any constitutional system that undertakes to give legal protection to freedom of speech, questions arise about the meaning of ‘speech’ and the scope of the freedom. One recurrent question is whether strongly negative statements about an individual or group, based on race or ethnic identity, are protected as ‘freedom of speech’. In this essay, I will treat such negative statements as ‘hate speech’,1 and I will refer to the question of whether such messages are entitled to constitutional protection as the ‘hate speech problem’.
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© 1999 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Buss, W.G. (1999). A Comparative Study of the Constitutional Protection of Hate Speech in Canada and the United States: A Search for Explanations. In: Kenney, S.J., Reisinger, W.M., Reitz, J.C. (eds) Constitutional Dialogues in Comparative Perspective. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780333982518_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780333982518_5
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-40887-0
Online ISBN: 978-0-333-98251-8
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