Jeremy Waldron The Harm In Hate Speech Summary

The Harm In Hate Speech Jeremy Waldron is a University Professor at the New York University School of Law where he has written and published in the area of legal positivism and political theory. He writes his books and articles on theories of rights, constitutionalism, the rule of law, and on democracy endorsing speech law legislation (Biography). In his book, “The Harm in Hate Speech,” Waldron claims that people’s dignity should be protected against hate speech and needs to be a part of hate speech legislation. In chapter 5, “Protecting dignity or Protection from Offense,” he insists that hate speech laws should protect someone’s dignity from verbal assault but not from them being offended, saying that offense has nothing to do with

Offense should not be protected by speech law because it is simply characterized as displeasure and hurt, not as a loss of dignity. On the other hand, he says that dignity should be protected by the law because hate speech reduces togetherness, social peace, and undermines the dignity of the person. Protecting dignity according to Waldron is to shelter someone's position in society where the law will protect a person's social aspects and subjective aspects of a person's feelings. Nonetheless, feelings should not be the target of the jurisdiction question but it is important to protect the dignity of the individuals based on assigned group characteristics, not the dignity of the group itself. Waldron believes that dignity should be protected from hate speech because hate speech aims at their reputation and undermines the targets equal status in the community, “to besmirch the basics of their reputation, by associating ascriptive characteristics like ethnicity, or race, or religion with conduct or attributes that should disqualify someone from being treated as a member of society in good standing,” (Waldron 5). Minority groups are the most vulnerable to

According to Waldron, dignity is "their social standing, the fundamentals of basic reputation that entitle them to be treated as equals in the ordinary operations of society," (Waldron 5). Dignity may be diminished when the victim is humiliated and there is a lack of respect for a person’s social standing, “Unlike offense, insults to dignity are not about wounded feelings, at least not in the first instance,” (Waldron 110). Continuing that, some areas of the law must hold people accountable for hurting others' feelings because “degrading treatment will be experienced as humiliation and will be felt as deeply distressing. This is because human dignity almost always has a conscious component, if only because it is linked to aspects of our being such as reason, understanding, autonomy, free will, and normative self-regard,” (Waldron 109). Protecting from offense is to protect from hate speech and he hopes that it will be taken more seriously by American legislators because the harm it does is not insignificant. (Mcconnell) Waldron defines offense as the "harm", but "undermining a person's dignity" is not the same as "causing offense to the same individual," (Waldron 105). Waldron believes that people can choose if they want to be offended by hate speech or not. Waldron thinks that offense is not a proper