Hate crime legislation and the limits of criminal law : a principled and evidence-based assessment of hate crime law and its application to Italy

This doctoral study examines whether hate crime law, as abstract models and as it is implemented in Italy, is legitimate under an integrated criminalisation theory. To do so, it first develops a classification framework for hate crime law based on relevant social and legal research. Then, it analyses and compares Italian and Anglo-American substantive criminalisation principles, and eventually merges the main elements of bot sets to create an Integrated Legitimacy Test. The test is first applied to hate crime law models to assess their legitimacy. Then, it is applied to Italian hate crime law. This analysis shows that hate crime law is legitimate in abstracto when drafted according to certain criteria. In Italy, only certain hate crime provisions are legitimate under the approach adopted