Gregory S. Gordon, Atrocity Speech Law

In recent years, a number of books have sought to bring more clarity into an area of international criminal law which is marked by considerable inconsistency, namely, speech crimes, which can include crimes and modes of liability, such as incitement, instigation, hate speech as persecution and ordering. The two books under review are the latest in this series of works.1 Both authors provide interesting critiques and propose innovative solutions to the problems ailing this area of international criminal law. Gregory Gordon’s Atrocity Speech Law delves into an exploration of the historical development of such crimes and modes of liability and provides a detailed examination of many of the flaws in this area of law as they emerged in the case law of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and the International Criminal Court (ICC). By contrast, Richard Ashby Wilson’s Incitement on Trial has a different focus. Examining inciting speech from not only the legal, but also the points of view of philosophy of language and social science, he provides an interesting and thorough analysis of the effects of speech acts. Moreover, to discover how far the assumptions underlying the law in this area are based in fact, Wilson draws on his own empirical studies, his statistical database of ICTY experts, and original research on the effects of hate speech, which he has conducted in collaboration with psychologists and anthropologists.2

Criminal law · Criminology · Incitement · International law · Persecution · Political science · Sociology · Tribunal · European and International Law Studies · Global Peace and Security Dynamics · International Law and Human Rights · Law