Hate speech and France's court of cassation

Résumé 0

Project Summary This project was designed to identify the factors that influenced French Court of Cassation (the Supreme Court for criminal law) decisions in hate speech cases. We identified all 103 substantive hate speech cases reviewed by the Court of Cassation between the inception of a major anti-racism law in 1972 and the end of 2012. We then identified categories of interviewees distributed across different types (judges, prosecutors, lawyers, NGOs, academics). We combined the information gathered from these interviews with information from the written court decisions as well as archival information detailing some internal deliberations of the court. The main conclusion of the research is that French judges are influenced to a significant degree by the social identity of the victim group, but that this influence has shifted over time. In general, the court has been much more apt to uphold convictions if the targets of the hate speech were understood as vulnerable minorities who are victims of "true racism" than if the targets were societal majorities such as whites, Catholics, Christians, or "French." Data Abstract Interviewees were selected according to procedures outlined in Bleich & Pekkanen (2013). Interviews were conducted in France, primarily between July 2014 and July 2015. Most were done in person, though some are phone interviews and some were email exchanges. Most interview records submitted here are the author's summaries of the interviews rather than transcripts. They are based on simultaneous note-taking supplemented by post-interview additions and edits. A few have been edited after the fact based on the interviewee's reading of the notes and amendments. The interview data was one key portion of evidence assembled to address the question of how the French high court decided hate speech cases. Written French court decisions are typically short, and do not contain as much information as, for example, US Supreme Court decisions, nor do they contain information about divisions within the court. So the interview data reveals information that goes beyond what is available in the written record. In addition, I relied on information on internal deliberations by court-appointed representatives (judges and prosecutors) derived from an archive for which I was granted access permission. I do not have permission to share this information, nor to reproduce the original court decisions.