Investigating Speech Crimes

Abstract

This book chapter explores and explains a range of investigative requirements, techniques, analytical methods and types of evidence most relevant to proving speech crimes in international criminal law. The chapter is an integral part of The Hartford Guidelines on Speech Crimes in International Criminal Law, published with the purpose of (a) emphasizing the preventative potential of the international criminal law, (b) indicting inchoate crimes rather than completed crimes and treating incitement to genocide as an inchoate crime not a mode of liability for completed crimes, (c) including hate speech as a form of the crime of persecution in article 7 of the Statute of the International Criminal Court, (d) amending article 25(3)(e) of the Rome Statute to include a form of liability of intentionally, directly and publicly inciting the commission of any crime under the Statute, irrespective of whether those crimes are attempted or committed, and (e) drawing from social science research to evaluate speech according to a checklist of indicative factors known to elevate the risk of ethnic, racial and religious violence.

Keywords: Speech Crimes, International Criminal Law, ICTY, ICTR, ICC