Gregory Gordon (lawyer)

Gordon is known for his academic work calling for the criminalization under international law of a broader category of speech likely to cause and/or fuel mass atrocities (i.e., broader than mere incitement to genocide), and his book Atrocity Speech Law: Foundation, Fragmentation, Fruition (Oxford University Press 2017) in which he advances this argument.

[4][5] He supports the prosecution of people who are guilty of atrocity speech, and argues that international criminal law has a deterrent effect on those who are contemplating committing mass murder.

[6] He has analyzed the possibility of prosecuting Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for incitement to genocide and hate speech as the crime against humanity of persecution.

For example, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia came to different conclusions about the prosecution of hate speech as crimes against humanity (persecution), with the ICTR holding that speech that does not directly call for violence may be prosecutable, while the ICTY disagreed.

[4] Benjamin B. Ferencz, chief prosecutor of the Einsatzgruppen Trial, wrote the foreword to the book, which he praised as "an important cornerstone that will serve as a foundation stone for the future prosecution of crimes against humanity.