University Hate Speech Codes This research paper reviews and ana

This research paper reviews and analyzes the constitutionality of university campus hate speech codes. In every case in which the constitutionality of such codes and related state or local laws has been tested in the courts, such codes and laws have been found to be in violation of the free speech provision of the First Amendment. Such codes which are promulgated by private universities are constitutional; however,

unless and until the hostility of a majority of the Supreme Court toward such codes eases, only very narrowly drafted codes of public universities have much chance of surviving constitutional challenges to their validity.

In the 1980s and early 1990s, a number of leading universities in the United States, including Michigan, Wisconsin, Stanford and Emory, adopted speech codes which were designed to prohibit and/or to impose sanctions against expressions of hate speech on campus. Walker defines hate speech to include "any form of expression deemed offensive to any racial, religious, ethnic or national group." Such codes were a response to the outbreak on many campuses of violent speech and incidents against certain groups. According to Matusda, Lawrence, Delgado and Crenshaw, a 1990 Report by the National Institute Against Prejudice and Violence found that 65 to 70 percent of minority students reported that they had been the targets of some sort of ethnoviolent harassment, a group of victims estimated to be 800,000 to 1,000,000 per annum. The a

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wo professors, one of whom had made derogatory statements concerning the intelligence of blacks and the other anti-Semitic remarks. R.A.V. Cross-Burning Case The most definitive statement by the Supreme Court on hate speech came in the R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul case in June, 1992. A Minnesota court had upheld a St. Paul city ordinance which prohibited the placing "on public or private property [of] a symbol, object, appellation, characterization or graffiti" [that] "arouses anger, alarm or resentment in others on the basis of race, color, creed, religion or gender." The Minnesota Court said that the burning of a cross on the lawn of an African-American couple was "deplorable conduct that the city of St. Paul may without question prohibit." Justice Souter, for the five to four majority, stated in his opinion that "local governments, . . . may prohibit littering or arson on people's lawns, but they may not single out racially motivated acts, such cross burning for criminalization." Four justices who concurred with Scalia--White, Blackmun, O'Connor and Stevens--agreed that the St. Paul ordinance was overly broad and therefore unconstitutional under the First Amendment; but they disassociated themselves from the overly s

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