Incitement on Trial
Prosecuting International Speech Crimes

This book explains why international criminal tribunals struggle to monitor inciting speech, and proposes a model of prevention and punishment.

Richard Ashby Wilson (Author)

9781107103108, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 18 August 2017

376 pages
23.6 x 15.9 x 2.4 cm, 0.64 kg

'Wilson's book is pioneering in its ambitious goal of offering concrete suggestions regarding how different types of knowledge can inform the legal doctrine of international criminal law, enhancing the law's ability to offer an effective regulatory response to inciting speech.' Nicola Palmer and Felix Kroner, International Journal of Transitional Justice

International and national armed conflicts are usually preceded by a media campaign in which public figures foment ethnic, national, racial or religious hatred, inciting listeners to acts of violence. Incitement on Trial evaluates the efforts of international criminal tribunals to hold such inciters criminally responsible. This is an unsettled area of international criminal law, and prosecutors have often struggled to demonstrate a causal connection between speech acts and subsequent crimes. This book identifies 'revenge speech' as the type of rhetoric with the greatest effects on empathy and tolerance for violence. Wilson argues that inciting speech should be handled under the preventative doctrine of inchoate crimes, but that once international crimes have been committed, then ordering and complicity are the most appropriate forms of criminal liability. Based in extensive original research, this book proposes an evidence-based risk assessment model for monitoring political speech.

1. Inciting speech in international law and social science
2. Direct and public incitement to commit genocide: an inchoate crime
3. Causation in international speech crimes
4. Instigating persecution: the prosecution case against Vojislav Šešelj
5. Metaphors, agency and mental causation in speech crimes trials
6. Social research in international speech crimes trials
7. The social science of persuasion
8. A new model for preventing and punishing international speech crimes.

Subject Areas: Public international law [LBB]