Editing Hate speech (section)

== History (USA)==
{{Globalize|section|United States|date=August 2024}}
Starting in the 1940s and 50s, various American civil rights groups responded to the atrocities of [[World War II]] by advocating for restrictions on hateful speech targeting groups on the basis of race and religion.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Walker|first=Samuel|title=Hate Speech: The History of an American Controversy|publisher=University of Nebraska Press|year=1994|location=Lincoln|page=79}}</ref> These organizations used group libel as a legal framework for describing the violence of hate speech and addressing its harm. In his discussion of the history of criminal libel, scholar [[Jeremy Waldron]] states that these laws helped "vindicate public order, not just by preempting violence, but by upholding against attack a shared sense of the basic elements of each person's status, dignity, and reputation as a citizen or member of society in good standing".<ref>{{Cite book|last=Waldron|first=Jeremy|title=The Harm in Hate Speech|publisher=Harvard University Press|year=2012|page=47}}</ref> A key legal victory for this view came in 1952 when group libel law was affirmed by the United States Supreme Court in [[Beauharnais v. Illinois]].<ref>{{Cite book|last=Waldron|first=Jeremy|title=The Harm in Hate Speech|publisher=Harvard University Press|year=2012|page=41}}</ref> However, the group libel approach lost ground due to a rise in support for individual rights within civil rights movements during the 60s.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Walker|first=Samuel|title=Hate Speech: The History of an American Controversy|publisher=University of Nebraska Press|year=1994|location=Lincoln|page=78}}</ref> Critiques of group defamation laws are not limited to defenders of individual rights. Some legal theorists, such as [[Critical Race Theory|critical race theorist]] Richard Delgado, support legal limits on hate speech, but claim that defamation is too narrow a category to fully counter hate speech. Ultimately, Delgado advocates a legal strategy that would establish a specific section of [[Tort|tort law]] for responding to racist insults, citing the difficulty of receiving redress under the existing legal system.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Delgado|first=Richard|title=Words That Wound: Critical Race Theory, Assaultive Speech, and the First Amendment|publisher=Westview Press|editor-last=Matsuda|editor-first=Mari J.|page=90}}</ref>