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50 Geo. Wash. Int'l L. Rev. 447 (2017-2018)
Atrocity Speech Law: Foundation, Fragmentation, Fruition

handle is hein.journals/gwilr50 and id is 477 raw text is: BOOK NOTE Atrocity Speech Law: Foundation, Fragmentation, Fruition, by Gregory S. Gordon. Oxford Univ. Press, 2017. Pp. 436. $55.26 (hardcover). BOOK NOTE BY QuAN Li Atrocity Speech Law is a new term coined by Gregory S. Gordon to address the current fragmented and ineffective approach under international law to deal with hate speech. Gordon demonstrates in his discussions clearly and persuasively that the current international hate speech law is a messy and dis- jointed body riddled with gaps. But speech is so crucial in terms of fomenting mass violence or human rights violations that it has to be regulated in a holistic and unified way. By connecting the terms atrocity and speech, Gordon makes an important contribution to the literature by conveying the idea, for the first time, that there is a full scope of atrocity offenses that can be connected with speech. In this regard, terms and concepts people have used in the past to capture this kind of offense such as hate speech law or incitement are insufficient. As Gordon argues, international hate speech law does not capture the connection between speech and mass violence, and the concept of incitement leaves out a variety of other kinds of offenses that should be considered, such as instigation, ordering, and persecution as a crime against human- ity. Atrocity Speech Law, on the other hand, covers both the breadth of the law and its connection with mass atrocity, thus becoming an important umbrella term. With this non-fragmented and holistic definition coined, Gordon's analysis then leads to a comprehensive proposal of Unified Liability Theory, linking the core crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes with four illicit speech modalities: incitement, speech abetting, instigation, and ordering. It attaches individual's speech offenses to all the international crimes, thus making it clear to scholars, jurists, and practitioners that speech is often integral to persecu- tion and mass atrocity campaigns and that we need to think of these offenses together and understand how they work in relation to each other. This is a groundbreaking proposal, allowing prose-

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