James B. Jacobs and Kimberly Potter

About the author: James B. Jacobs is the director of New York University's Center for Research in Crime and Justice and a law professor at NYU School of Law. Kimberly Potter, a former senior research fellow at NYU's Center for Research in Crime and Justice, is a lawyer in private practice in New York. Jacobs and Potter are the authors of Hate Crimes: Criminal Law and Identity Politics.

Prejudiced and demeaning assertions about a person or group's race, color, national origin, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or disability is called hate speech. Unsurprisingly, efforts to outlaw hate speech have been repeatedly problematic and unsuccessful. The ideas upon which anti-hate speech laws and codes are based—hatred and prejudice—are too vague to be meaningful, especially...