Concluding Thoughts
Robert M. Post · Oxford University Press eBooks · 2018
This chapter reflects on the volume as a whole. It asks how we should imagine and deal with hatred within a legal order that is both liberal and democratic. The chapter traces the traditional treatment of hatred in the Anglo-American legal tradition, focusing on concepts of malice and libel. It discusses how contemporary concepts of hate crime and hate speech differ from this treatment: the former primarily seeks to achieve socio-political integration of groups rather than to preserve forms of respect that individuals owe each other. Trading on traditional ideas of hatred, modern legal sanctions may themselves contribute to the polarization and intolerance that they aim to destroy. Persons branded as “haters” are effectively excommunicated from the polity, and so have little to lose from a politics of resentment. The chapter suggests that antidiscrimination law may be a better model for achieving socio-political integration than contemporary evocations of “hatred.”