Kimmo Nuotio, Agitation to Hatred as an Offense: Finnish, Nordic and European Perspectives

On October 17, 2023，Professor Kimmo Nuotio, Distinguished Global Faculty of PKU Law and Professor of Criminal Law at the University of Helsinki, gave a thought-provoking lecture on "Agitation to Hatred as an Offense: Finnish, Nordic, and European Perspectives" at Peking University Law School.

Professor Kimmo Nuotio opened by analyzing key hate speech regulations in Finland and Europe, including relevant provisions from the Finnish Penal Code and the European Convention on Human Rights. With the rise of racist sentiments following the 2015 migration wave in Europe, balancing freedom of expression with curbing harmful, discriminatory utterances has become a crucial debate in legal scholarship. Professor Kimmo Nuotio introduced the "abuse of rights" doctrine as a potential legal basis for restricting hate speech without infringing on legitimate discourse.

Delving deeper, Professor Kimmo Nuotio explored, from a Finnish, Nordic, and European perspective, whether acts like displaying Nazi symbols, denying the Holocaust, or engaging in religious hate speech fall under laws against hate speech. While various viewpoints exist, national courts, guided by the valuable jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights, are actively developing relevant case law to address these complex issues.

Speaker Profile:

Kimmo Nuotio is a professor of criminal law. He has served as the Chairman of the Finnish Council for Strategic Research and as a Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute's Department of Law. He also served as the Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Helsinki from 2010 to 2017. His primary research topics include: theoretical foundations of penal liability, modernization of criminal law, European and international criminal law, trans-nationalization of criminal law, European legal integration, and criminal law and cultural diversity.

To learn more about the event, please check out:

https://www.law.pku.edu.cn/xwzx/xwdt/153634.htm