Are Hate Speech Laws Useless? An Appraisal of Eric Heinze’s Arguments

Most Western democracies and international institutions have currently adopted a range of policies aimed at regulating hate speech. However, the kinds of target groups that hate speech regulations seek to protect have not been clearly defined yet. In a series of publications, Eric Heinze has challenged the coherence of such regulations. His core thesis is that hate speech laws have simply no place in longstanding, stable, and prosperous democracies. In this paper, I examine the three main charges Heinze raises against hate speech laws—namely, discriminatory selectivity, impermissible censorship, and arbitrariness—and I seek to demonstrate that none of them can withstand critical analysis.