Free Speech and Hate Speech in the United States: The Limits of Toleration

Free Speech and Hate Speech in the United States explores the concept and treatment of hate speech in light of escalating social tensions in the global twenty-first century, proposing a shift in emphasis from the negative protection of individual rights toward a more positive support of social equality.

Drawing on Axel Honneth’s theory of recognition, the author develops a two-tiered framework for free speech analysis that will promote a strategy for combating hate speech. To illustrate how...