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A History of Significant Legal Decisions Involving Hate Speech

In: Historical Events

Submitted By agallo716
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Significant Legal Decisions Involving Hate Speech in America
What exactly is Hate Speech? There are many different variations to this answer. According to dictionary.com, it is “speech that attacks a person or group on the basis of race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation” (“hate speech”). Anthony Lewis’ description of hate speech focuses more on the people it aims at: “Hate speech, it is called: virulent attack on Jews, blacks, Muslims, homosexuals, or members of any other group. It is pure hatred, not based on any wrong done by an individual” (157) Throughout history, many cases involving hate speech have been brought to court; each of them differ in their own ways and each brought a significant change to our Constitution. Our country prides itself in having freedom for all, and that includes freedom of speech. But when does freedom of speech cross the line? Many court decisions tried to come up with a solid answer, but there may not ever be a successful way to categorize hate speech. All of the cases covered here played a large part in transforming what the First Amendment covers.
America started to recognize the significance of hate speech beginning in 1940, and policies began to form to protect offensive speech. At this point in history, hate speech was better known as “racial and religious propaganda” (Walker 62). The Holocaust was a major turning point for America, because we realized the destruction that it caused, and the government wanted to make sure nothing of that nature ever happened again. Americans realized it was constitutionally important to protect minorities that were being mistreated. In a time when Americans were striving to protect minorities, the Jehovah’s Witnesses crisis ensued. These Witnesses were creating offensive religious publicity through speaking to anyone and everyone that would listen.
Cantwell v. Connecticut (1940) is a

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