Readers of my column about Jeremy Waldron's new book, "The Harm in Hate Speech," wondered how the hate speech regulations Waldron calls for could be implemented, and wondered, too, whether key terms like "dignity" and "harm" could be defined in ways that would avoid the dangers of imprecision and the slippery slope. The editors and I have invited Professor Waldron to respond to these and other questions. One poster asked if I was reporting on Waldron's arguments or endorsing them. I was endorsing them, as I have already (implicitly) done in "There's No Such Thing as Free Speech ... And It's a Good Thing, Too" and other publications. - S.F.

I am grateful to Stanley Fish for his review and for the sympathetic attention he paid to the detailed arguments in "The Harm in Hate Speech." I also appreciate the responses to Fish's review. The issue of hate speech legislation is, in my view, a difficult one. There are good arguments on both sides and, among the respondents, the critics have flagged a number of important issues.

Of course some of the critics are just dismissive: "Is Waldron's book ... a joke?" asked Ron Hansing of Columbus, Mo. "God help us from this kind of thinking!" And Robert Cicero of Tuckahoe, N.Y., wrote: "Shame on the whole lot of you" for even discussing this; the discussion, he said, "is yet one more assault on the US Constitution." Or as Paz from New Jersey put it, "What part of 'shall not be infringed' do you fail to understand?"

But even those who love the First Amendment should be interested in at least understanding the things that can be said on the other side, if only to reinforce their sense of what's distinctive about this country's commitments. A large proportion of the other advanced democracies in the world combine a commitment to free speech with rules prohibiting hate speech. Isn't it worth considering how they do this? And why? No one is burning the constitution here. We're just trying to think about it.

Democracies like Britain, France, Germany, Denmark, Canada and New Zealand all prohibit hate speech of various kinds. They do so for what they think are good reasons. It is worth thinking about those reasons. Are they good reasons that (from an American First Amendment perspective) are just not strong enough to stand up against our overwhelmingly powerful commitment to free speech? Or are they simply bad reasons?

I think some of the things people cite in favor of hate speech regulation are bad reasons - like trying to protect people from being offended and annoyed. I agree with Stanley Fish about that. But some of the reasons are about dignity, not offense - I spend a lot of time in the book thinking aloud about that distinction - and these reasons are worth taking seriously, even if ultimately we think they are trumped by the value of free speech.

Rtbinc from Brooklyn asks: "What does Dignity mean here?" Shari from Cambridge, Mass., says that "dignity" remains conspicuously undefined. She calls it "a term often suspect in its uses, and very difficult to define." Remember, though, that we are thinking about dignity as a justification for these laws, not as part of the legal text itself. So we need a broad understanding of it and an understanding of how it is affected by hate speech, not a technical definition.

But what I have in mind when I talk about dignity is this - a person's basic social status, his or her being treated as an ordinary member of society in good standing, his or her being included in the ordinary business of society. A person's dignity is damaged, then, when he or she is publicly defamed or dehumanized, or when he or she is perceived as belonging to a group all of whose members are defamed or dehumanized. In parts of Miami some restaurant signs used to say, "Jews and dogs not welcome here." A legal prohibition on such signs would be aimed at securing the inclusiveness of the social environment against such attempts to undermine it.

That's the underlying justification. But how would the laws be formulated? Sean Power of Scottsdale, Ariz., and Mcghostofelectricity, from Evanston, IL, say that the problem is "Who defines hate speech?" (Matthew Sills from Seattle says that he or she "certainly wouldn't give the job to either Professor Fish or Professor Waldron.") It's an important question because as TheOwl from New England points out, "The devil in the regulation of speech is in the detail."

Well, fortunately, we don't have to reinvent the wheel on this one. We can draw on the legislative and regulatory experience of the dozens of democracies that already do this - that have enacted well-drafted hate speech laws and have amended and refined them over the years. They define hate speech in terms of the manner of speaking (threateningly, abusively) and in terms of its intended object (to stir up hatred against some group). And the legislation is often at pains to identify modes of robust speech and debate that are not prohibited.

For example, the British Public Order Act stipulates that "a person who uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or displays any written material which is threatening, abusive or insulting, is guilty of an offence if (a) he intends thereby to stir up racial hatred, or (b) having regard to all the circumstances racial hatred is likely to be stirred up thereby." The statute defines various defenses like talking in a private place or being unaware of the likelihood that the speech would stir up racial hatred.

Again, the statute defines religious hatred as "hatred against a group of persons defined by reference to religious belief or lack of religious belief" but it also insists that nothing in the statute "shall be read or given effect in a way which prohibits or restricts discussion, criticism or expressions of antipathy, dislike, ridicule, insult or abuse of particular religions or the beliefs or practices of their adherents, or of any other belief system or the beliefs or practices of its adherents, or proselytizing or urging adherents of a different religion or belief system to cease practicing their religion or belief system." It tries to protect the believers from defamation but not the belief. The British statute is not perfect, and its exact terms continue to be debated. Other countries take different approaches. My point is that we would have a wealth of examples to draw on if we were really interested in the questions of drafting and definition.

Michael of Jim Thorpe, Pa., says that the regulation of this sort of speech through the legislative process "is fraught with dangerous slippery slopes." He is right to worry: there are dangers here, though it has to be said there are slippery-slope dangers for all legal regulations. Some of the commentators write as though free speech is an absolute in America. But it is not: as Logos, from Indianapolis, pointed out, we already acknowledged various exceptions. "Despite the 'absolutist' interpretation of the First Amendment, laws still prohibit fraud, slander and libel, conspiracy, pornography."

And in each case, there are slippery-slope dangers that we have to face up to with legislative care and regulative safeguards. James B. Huntington of Eldred, N.Y., mentioned Oliver Wendell Holmes's image of the person who shouts "Fire!" in a crowded theater (that is not on fire) as a clear example of an exception to the free speech principle (as opposed to the vague exception he thinks I am proposing). But the crowded theater limitation can also be abused. In fact, Justice Holmes abused it when he held that publishing a pamphlet complaining that conscription violated the 13th Amendment was like shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater, though he could point to no panic analogous to the theater example. All doctrines of exception can be abused, judge-made exceptions no less than legislative ones.

I want to say something finally about two substantial suggestions that the commentators raised. One is about allowing people to speak so the hatred doesn't fester. Paxton Williams of Denison, Tex., says: "Just as it is better to lance a boil than to let it fester perhaps it is better to have the hateful and intolerant express themselves. Let them expose themselves to one and all rather than remain quite in a seething cauldron of unseen, unknown and unheard hate and ignorance."

I wonder. I said in the book that one of the aims of hate speech is not just to undermine the public good of inclusiveness and dignity, but also to establish a rival public good so that the racists and haters in the community can assure themselves and one another that they are not alone. I don't think the medical analogy - "lancing a boil" - necessarily applies. It presupposes that there is a limited amount of hatred festering beneath the surface and that once it is released, it will dissipate harmlessly. But what is our evidence for that? Is it not possible that publishing racist abuse encourages others to do the same, emboldening those who are tempted by hate-filled sentiments with the awareness that they are not alone? To mix some other metaphors, perhaps it is a good thing to drive race hatred underground, depriving it of the oxygen that it needs in order to flourish.

The second substantial point I want to make is about other ways of combating hate speech. Ricodechef from Portland, Ore., says that "the remedy for hate speech is defiance and argument, not restriction." His view is echoed by LayneDiehl, from Martinsburg, W. Va., who says: "I have often seen the uprising voice in response to hate speech serve more to bolster that dignity and perhaps balance out to an extent any injury or insult otherwise intended toward the victims."

I respect these points of view. But it is not an either/or. One can ban hate speech and speak out against it. Indeed, the legal ban is itself a way of speaking out against it. The other democracies that have hate speech legislation have not given up on other responses. They just think they ought to have this in their repertoire of possible responses as well. They think that the usefulness and the design of laws against hate speech ought to be a matter of legislative judgment for each community, not something that is precluded peremptorily by judicial interpretations of free speech.