Assessing Hate Crime Laws: A Multidisciplinary Perspective

by Lucille Micheletto

Overview

This book offers a critical analysis of hate crime law using Italy as a case study. Employing a multidisciplinary approach, it develops an international framework for mapping hate crime laws onto the phenomenon of hate crime itself, allowing for better legislation to be drafted. It shows how this analytical tool may be used in practice by applying it to legislation in Italy, where Parliament recently dismissed a legislative proposal to extend hate crime law to sex, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, and disability. The framework allows readers to critique the rationale behind hate crime laws and the effect of, or potential effect of, their implementation. This book ultimately seeks to answer to the question of how and whether States can legitimately introduce a harsher sentence for bias motivated crimes. It bridges interdisciplinary hate studies and more traditional legal analysis. It speaks to an international audience as well asto an audience with a specific interest in the Italian context.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783031190209
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan
Publication date:	03/01/2023
Series:	Palgrave Hate Studies
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	377 KB

About the Author

Lucille Micheletto is a legal adviser in Spanish Migration Law and Human Rights in Granada, Spain. She has a PhD in Law from Ghent University, Belgium. She has worked as a lawyer and researcher (also on the topic of hate crimes) in a number of European and International organisations (e.g. the European Court of Human Rights, the European Ombudsman, the European Agency for Fundamental Rights) and NGOs (e.g. the AIRE Centre, Amnesty International, Movimiento Por La Paz, Cassero LGBTI+ Center). 

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Introduction.- Chapter 2: A Framework to Analyse Hate Crime Law.- Chapter 3: Analysis of Abstract Models of Hate Crime Law.- Chapter 4: Analysis of Italian Hate Crime Law.- Chapter 5: Conclusions.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"This is a must-read book for academics and students seeking innovative thinking about the legitimacy and reach of hate crime laws. Its novel analytical framework paves the way for a new generation of scholarship in hate crime legal studies. It also provides a valuable guide for lawmakers internationally when weighing the boundaries of state power in criminalising hateful conduct."
- Paul Iganski, Professor Emeritus, Lancaster University Law School, UK

“This important and timely book – particularly in view of the noted rise of hate crime in societies of the Global North, further spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic and the societal reactions thereto – is an essential reading for anyone interested in the regulation of prejudice-based crime. Providing an excellent assessment and analysis of hate crime law in Italy as well as internationally, it presents an original and invaluable contribution to the existing legal scholarship in the highly topical field of hate crime.”
-Nina Peršak, Scientific Director, Institute for Criminal-Law Ethics and Criminology, Ljubljana, Slovenia

“Lucille Micheletto’s contribution to the legitimacy debate on hate crime laws is impressive: theoretically novel and empirically underpinned. Both the four-tier framework to analyse hate crime laws and the integrated legitimacy test, bridging Anglo-American and continental European criminalisation approaches, are doctrinally sound and appealing. Her choice to also draw on empirical data to conduct an applied legitimacy assessment is convincing and refreshing.”
-Gert Vermeulen, Senior Full Professor of Criminal Law, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium