Review of: Alex Brown, Hate Speech Law: A Philosophical Examination
Eric Heinze · SSRN Electronic Journal · 2018
In Hate Speech Law: A Philosophical Examination thoughtfully and rigorously explores arguments both for and against hate speech bans. However, his analysis retains a fundamentally liberal paradigm: his arguments in favour of free speech derive from the strengths of liberalism, while his pro-ban arguments draw upon liberalism’s broader shortcomings. Although he certainly takes note of the role of free speech within democratic processes, he fails to construe free speech as irreducibly constitutive of those processes, instead simply collapsing free speech into the object of one among many liberal rights.