Hostname: page-component-cc8bf7c57-n7qbj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-10T15:33:44.615Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Exception to Excess: Tactical Use of the Law by Outgroups in Bias Crime Legislation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2018

Abstract

US bias crime jurisprudence follows the discrimination model and ejects “hate” from scrutiny. It is suggestive of improvements that should be made to Canadian law insofar as it also better tracks the enactment of discrimination against difference occasioned in the everyday. Criminal law, however, remains weak at preventing crime. And where the law requires evidence of discrimination, it iterates the stereotypes and social backdrop of hate crime. But this view on law and culture underestimates how outgroups may produce countermeanings and influence the law. Turning to the more material basis of identity, neoconservatism has given the law a broad ambit whereby coercion as opposed to investment in human capacities is promoted as the means to social order. Where scholars argue that discursive collaboration with retributionist policy requires outgroups to pursue cultural revalorization, given the decreasing freedom under the contemporary authoritarian paradigm, I argue that they must also pursue distributional justice.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 2012 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

References

Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Bakan, Joel. 1997. Just Words: Constitutional Rights and Social Wrongs. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Bell, David. 1995. Perverse Dynamics, Sexual Citizenship and the Transformation of Intimacy. In Mapping Desire: Geographies of Sexualities, ed. Valentine, Gill and Bell, David, 304–16. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Blaser, Mario. 2010. Storytelling Globalization: From the Chaco and Beyond. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. (1975). The Specificity of the Scientific Field and the Social Conditions of the Progress of Reason. Social Science Information 14 (6): 1947.Google Scholar
Bowling, Benjamin. 1998. Violent Racism: Victimization, Policing, and Social Context. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Burney, Elizabeth, and Rose, Gerry. 2002. Racist Offenses: How Is the Law Working? London: Home Office Research, Development and Statistics Directorate.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith. 1993. Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex.” New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith. 1997. Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith. 1999. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith. 2004. Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 2007. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Cooper, Davina. 1993. An Engaged State: Sexuality, Governance, and the Potential for Change. Journal of Law and Society 20 (3): 257–75.Google Scholar
De Certeau, Michel. 1988. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. 2002. Force of Law: The Mystical Foundation of Authority. In Acts of Religion, ed. Anidjar, Gill, 230–98. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Dillof, Anthony M. 1997. Punishing Bias: An Examination of the Theoretical Foundations of Bias Crimes Statutes. Northwestern University Law Review 91 (3): 1015–81.Google Scholar
Dixon, Bill, and Gadd, David. (2006). Getting the Message? “New” Labour and the Criminalization of “Hate. Criminology and Criminal Justice 6 (3): 309–28.Google Scholar
Escobar, Arturo. 2008. Territories of Difference: Place, Movement, Life, redes [networks] . Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Fitzpatrick, Peter. 2001. Modernism and the Grounds of Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Fitzpatrick, Peter. 2005. Bare Sovereignty: Homo Sacer and the Insistence of Law. In Politics, Metaphysics, and Death: Essays on Giorgio Agamben's Homo Sacer , ed. Norris, Andrew, 4973. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1990. The History of Sexuality. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 2003. Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975–76. New York: Picador.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 2007. Security, Territory, Population. New York: Palgrave.Google Scholar
Garland, David. 2001. The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Gellman, Susan. 1991. Sticks and Stones Can Put You in Jail, But Words Can Increase Your Sentence? UCLA Law Review 39 (2): 333–96.Google Scholar
Gibson‐Graham, J. K. 1996. The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It). Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Gibson‐Graham, J. K. 2006. A Postcapitalist Politics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Giddens, Anthony. 1984. The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Gregory, Derek. 2006. The Blackflag: Guantánamo Bay and the State of Exception. Geografiska Annaler, Series B: Human Geography 88 (4): 405–27.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jurgen. 1984. The Theory of Communicative Action. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Harvey, David. 2005. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Iganski, Paul. 1999. Why Make “Hate” a Crime? Critical Social Policy 19 (3): 386–95.Google Scholar
Iganski, Paul. 2008. “Hate Crime” and the City. Bristol, UK: Policy Press.Google Scholar
Jacobs, James, and Potter, Kimberly. 1998. Hate Crimes: Criminal Law and Identity Politics. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Jenness, Valerie. 2007. The Emergence, Content, and Institutionalization of Hate Crime Law: How a Diverse Policy Community Produced a Modern Legal Fact. Annual Review of Law and Social Science 3 (1): 141–60.Google Scholar
Jenness, Valerie, and Grattet, Ryken. 2001. Making Hate a Crime: From Social Movement to Law Enforcement. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Kahan, Dan. 2001. Two Liberal Fallacies in the Hate Crimes Debate. Law and Philosophy 20: 175193.Google Scholar
Landrine, Hope, and Klonoff, Elizabeth A. 1996. The Schedule of Racist Events: A Measure of Racial Discrimination and a Study of its Negative Physical and Mental Health Consequences. Journal of Black Psychology 22:144–68.Google Scholar
Latour, Bruno. 1993. We Have Never Been Modern. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Levin, Brian. 1999. Hate Crimes: Worse by Definition. Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice 15 (1): 621.Google Scholar
Marx, Karl. 1852 1978. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. In The Marx‐Engels Reader, ed. Tucker, Robert C. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
McLaughlin, Eugene. 2002. Rocks and Hard Places: The Politics of Hate Crime. Theoretical Criminology 6 (4): 493–98.Google Scholar
Moore, Dawn, and Rennie, Angus. 2006. Hated Identities: Queers and Canadian Anti‐Hate Legislation. Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice 48 (5): 823–36.Google Scholar
Moran, Leslie. 2004. The Emotional Dimensions of Lesbian and Gay Demands for Hate Crime Reform. McGill Law Journal 49:925–49.Google Scholar
Morsch, James. 1991. The Problem of Motive in Hate Crimes: The Argument Against Presumptions of Racial Motivation. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 82 (3): 659–89.Google Scholar
Nielsen, Laura Beth. 2000. Situating Legal Consciousness: Experiences and Attitudes of Ordinary Citizens about Law and Street Harassment. Law & Society Review 34:1055–90.Google Scholar
Perelle, Robin. 2009a. More than 2,000 March through Vancouver's Gay Village: “We're Speaking Out Today to Take Back Our West End”: Gay MLA. Xtra! West, April 5. http://www.xtra.ca/public/Vancouver/More_than_2000_march_through_Vancouvers_gay_village‐6549.aspx (accessed December 3, 2009).Google Scholar
Perelle, Robin. 2009b Where's Wally? Xtra! West, April 9. http://www.xtra.ca/public/Vancouver/Wheres_Wally‐6585.aspx. (accessed December 3, 2009).Google Scholar
Perelle, Robin. 2010. Judge Shines: “We Have a Good Precedent Now,” Crown Says. Xtra! West, May 6. http://www.xtra.ca/public/Vancouver/Judge_shines‐8603.aspx (accessed February 27, 2011).Google Scholar
Perry, Barbara. 2001. In the Name of Hate: Understanding Hate Crimes. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Petersen, Cynthia. 1991. A Queer Response to Bashing: Legislating Against Hate. Queen's Law Journal 16 (2): 237–60.Google Scholar
Pratt, Gerry. 2005. Abandoned Women and Spaces of the Exception. Antipode 37 (5): 1052–78.Google Scholar
Richards, David A. J. 1999. Free Speech and the Politics of Identity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Richardson, Diane, and May, Hazel. 1999. Deserving Victims?: Sexual Status and the Social Construction of Violence. Sociological Review 47 (2): 308–31.Google Scholar
Roberts, Julian, and Hastings, Andrew. 2001. Sentencing in Cases of Hate‐Motivated Crime: An Analysis of Subparagraph 718.2(a)(i) of the Criminal Code. Queen's Law Journal 27:93127.Google Scholar
Robertson, Sean. 2005. Spaces of Exception in Canadian Hate Crimes Legislation: Accounting for the Effects of Sexuality‐Based Aggravation in R. v. Cran . Criminal Law Quarterly 50 (4): 482507.Google Scholar
Rose, Nikolas, and Miller, Peter. 1992. Political Power beyond the State: Problematics of Government. British Journal of Sociology 43 (2): 173205.Google Scholar
Santos, Boaventura de Sousa. 2004. The World Social Forum: Toward a Counter‐Hegemonic Globalization (Part I). In The World Social Forum: Challenging Empires, ed. Sen, Jai, Anan, Anita, Escobar, Arturo, and Waterman, Peter, 235–45. Delhi: Viveka.Google Scholar
Sarat, Austin, and Kearns, Thomas R. 1993. Law in Everyday Life. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Savelsberg, Joachim J., and King, Ryan D. 2005. Institutionalizing Collective Memories of Hate: Law and Law Enforcement in Germany and the United States. American Journal of Sociology 111 (2): 579616.Google Scholar
Schmitt, Carl. 1985. Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Shaffer, Martha. 1995. Criminal Responses to Hate‐Motivated Violence: Is Bill C‐41 Tough Enough? McGill Law Review 41 (1): 199250.Google Scholar
Steffenhagen, Janet. 2010. Social Justice Dispute Heads for Full Hearing. Vancouver Sun, March 12. http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/westcoastnews/story.html?id=3965692b‐c512‐49ee‐92d5‐277950730f0e (accessed February 27, 2011).Google Scholar
Takeuchi, Craig. 2009. Gay Bashings in Vancouver: West Enders March and Declare “Enough!” Georgia Straight, April 5. http://www.straight.com/article‐212829/gay‐bashings‐vancouver‐west‐enders‐march‐and‐declare‐enough (accessed February 27, 2011).Google Scholar
Valentine, Gill. 1996. (Re)Negotiating the “Heterosexual Street”: Lesbian Production of Space. In BodySpace: Destabilising Geographies of Gender and Sexuality, ed. Duncan, Nancy, 147–55. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Wang, Lu‐In. 1997. The Transforming Power of “Hate”: Social Cognition Theory and the Harms of Bias‐Related Crime. Southern California Lqw Review 71 (November): 47136.Google Scholar
Weinstein, James. 1992. First Amendment Challenges to Hate Crime Legislation: Where's the Speech? Criminal Justice Ethics 11 (2): 6.Google Scholar
Woods, Jordan B. 2008. Taking the “Hate” Out of Hate Crimes: Applying Unfair Advantage Theory to Justify the Enhanced Punishment of Opportunistic Bias Crimes. UCLA Law Review 56: 489542.Google Scholar

Cases Cited

Chamberlain v. Surrey School District No. 36, [2002] 4 S.C.R. 710.Google Scholar
Dobbins v. State, 605 So. 2d 922 (Fla. 1992).Google Scholar
R. v. Cran, [2004] B.C.J. No. 2574 (QL), 2004 BCSC 1635.Google Scholar
R. v. Cran, [2005] B.C.J. No. 215 (QL), 2005 BCSC 171.Google Scholar
R. v. S. (J.), [2003] B.C.J. No. 2877 (QL), 2003 BCPC 442 (B.C. Youth Ct).Google Scholar
R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, 505 U.S. 377 (1992).Google Scholar
State v. Stadler, 630 So. 2d 1072 (Fla. 1994).Google Scholar
Wisconsin v. Mitchell, 508 U.S. 489 (1993).Google Scholar

Statutes Cited

Crime and Disorder Act (U.K.), 1998, c. 37, as amended by s. 39(1)(3)(b) of the Anti‐terrorism, Crime and Security Act (2001), c. 24, and Criminal Justice Act (2003), c. 44, s. 146.Google Scholar
Criminal Code of Canada, R.S.C. 1985, c. C‐46.Google Scholar
Criminal Law (Consolidation) (Scotland) Act (U.K.), 1995, c. 39.Google Scholar
Hate Crimes Sentencing Enhancement Act (U.S.), Pub. L. No. 103‐322, 108 Stat. 1796 (1994) (codified in part at 28 U.S.C. § 994 note (1994)).Google Scholar
Hate Crime Statistics Act of 1990, 28 U.S.C.A. § 534 notes.Google Scholar
Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009 (U.S.), Pub. L. No. 111‐84, October 28, 2009, 123 Stat. 2190 (§§ 4701‐11 of the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2010).Google Scholar