Words that Wound: A Tort Action for Racial Insults, Epithets, and Name-Calling

Abstract

One of the first articles to discuss the problem of hate speech, Words That Wound discusses the harms of racist speech before proposing a new tort enabling its victims to recover damages from the utterer. I later expanded the article into a book with Jean Stefancic. Entitled Understanding Words That Wound, the book covers a range of recent problems including hate speech on the Internet, campus hate speech codes, and child porn.

Keywords: Race, Racism, Civil Rights, Hate Speech, Torts, Speech Codes, Discrimination