| Sumario: | A study was conducted to examine how the concept of hate crime has been transformed in judicial discourse from a broad ambiguous category to a focused determinate legal construct that has largely been accepted as a legitimate legal practice. Changes in judicial rhetoric across 38 appellate court opinions that consider the constitutionality of hate crimes from 1984 to 1999 were analyzed, and a theoretical framework for analyzing the “settling” of legal meaning was developed. It was revealed that the meaning of hate crime that emerges across the series of cases is much richer and more nuanced than the words used in the statutes; and that the domain of hate crimes has expanded across the cases to include a broad range of behaviors and mental precursors. It was further noted that judges have, over time, developed a more economical and formulaic rhetoric for responding to petitioners' constitutional challenges to hate crime statutes and have converged around sets of arguments for negotiating challenges.
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