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Unwarranted Assumptions In The Prosecution And Defense Of Hate Crimes, Lu-In Wang
Unwarranted Assumptions In The Prosecution And Defense Of Hate Crimes, Lu-In Wang
Articles
Although at far from the level of intensity and prominence that it reached 10 years ago, the controversy over hate crimes legislation continues. In the early 1990s, debate centered on two main points of contention: whether such laws, which either criminalized traditionally racist acts or increased the punishment for other crimes when they were motivated by racial or ethnic bias, violated the First Amendment right to freedom of expression, and whether the laws were unwise and illegitimate because they seemed to provide greater protection against crime to minority groups and to emphasize, rather than obscure or obliterate, the racial divisions …
Deciding When Hate Is A Crime: The First Amendment, Police Detectives, And The Identification Of Hate Crime, Jeannine Bell
Deciding When Hate Is A Crime: The First Amendment, Police Detectives, And The Identification Of Hate Crime, Jeannine Bell
Articles by Maurer Faculty
This Article adds to the debate a story of how hate crime law is enforced, based on the experiences of the police detectives who are required to enforce hate crime law. Part I of this Article provides a brief description of hate crime laws and argues that the police play an important role in the determination of how hate crime law is enforced and ultimately, whether defendants’ First Amendment rights will be respected. Part II describes critics’ concerns about defendants’ First Amendment rights and the narrow constitutional line that enforcers of hate crime law must walk between enforcing hate crime …