On administrative liability for hate speech

Abstract

The paper deals with the issue of punishing hate speech in Slovak law with a focus on administrative punishment. The author considers the desirabilty of such punishment in view of the two existing approaches to freedom of speech – European and American – focusing on the empirical side of the problem and noting the Slovak data both at the administrative and criminal level. He processes and interprets this data. The question he asks is, put simply, whether, since 2014, administrative offences that would otherwise be dealt with as criminal offences have been punished in Slovakia, or, on the contrary, rather offences that would otherwise not be dealt with at all. The answer to this question is linked to the assessment of the desirability of such an administrative regulation in the perspectives of both models of freedom of speech.