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‘No way out’? Mens rea, the demonstration of hatred, and hate crime legislation

Date
2026-01-16
Abstract
Hate crime legislation was introduced in Ireland for the first time in 2024 through the Criminal Justice (Hate Offences) Act 2024. The Irish legislation draws heavily on the Scottish Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021 and uses both the ‘motivation test’ and ‘demonstration test’ for establishing liability. We explore how the demonstration test might be interpreted in Ireland given the absence of a stated mens rea in the legislation to accompany the actus reus of demonstrating hatred. We explore whether a mens rea is necessary in the operative part of legislation through the lens of recent Irish case law on the issue, examine analagous case law from Britain, and ask whether the 2024 Act can withstand judicial scrutiny.
Supervisor
Description
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Citation
Legal Studies (46), pp. 141–146
Collections
European Centre for the Study of Hate
School of Law
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Schweppe_2026_'No_way_out'.pdf
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Keywords
hate crime, statutory interpretation, mens rea, criminal liability, violent crime
ULRR Identifiers
https://hdl.handle.net/10344/31782
 https://doi.org/10.34961/19386
Funding code
Funding Information
Sustainable Development Goals
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License
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International
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