Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly Volume 45 Article 4 Number 3 Spring 2018 1-1-2018 Striking the Right Balance: Hate Speech Laws in Japan, the United States, and Canada Craig Martin Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.uchastings.edu/ hastings_constitutional_law_quaterly Part of the Constitutional Law Commons Recommended Citation Craig Martin, Striking the Right Balance: Hate Speech Laws in Japan, the United States, and Canada, 45 Hastings Const. L.Q. 455 (2018). Available at: https://repository.uchastings.edu/hastings_constitutional_law_quaterly/vol45/iss3/4 This Symposium is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Journals at UC Hastings Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly by an authorized editor of UC Hastings Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Striking the Right Balance: Hate Speech Laws in Japan, the United States, and Canada by CRAIG MARTIN* Introduction The issue of hate speech has occupied the headlines of many democracies in recent years. Whether it be Charlottesville, Kyoto, or Warsaw, the rise of nativist, nationalist, and racist groups, expressing hatred towards minorities within society, has once again confronted us with the question of how far democracies can or should go in limiting certain extreme forms of hateful discriminatory expression. Certain types of hate speech, which have the purpose and effect of fostering hatred against groups defined by certain characteristics such as race, ethnicity, religion, gender, or sexual orientation, and which take the form of extreme vilification, denigration, and even dehumanization of its targets, are known to cause significant harm.1 This harm is suffered by the members of such groups, both in the form of direct emotional and psychological harm caused by the speech itself, and also in the form of increased levels of discrimination and persecution as a consequence of the hatred fomented in society by such speech.