Legitimacy and Hate Speech

Abstract

It is a pleasure to participate in this symposium on democratic legitimacy and hate speech regulation. Although I have often contemplated the relationship between First Amendment doctrine and democratic legitimation, I have always done so in the manner of a legal scholar. I have not inquired -as perhaps a moral philosopher might- about what James Weinstein calls "the objective criteria that morally entitle a political entity to govern." I find myself unmoved to speculate about such objective normative criteria, and am instead content to focus on the descriptive conditions necessary for a diverse and heterogeneous population to live together in a relatively peaceable manner under a common system of governance and politics.