The course is dedicated to the study of the category of hate crimes - which also includes hate speech - a category that is characterized by crimes committed due to bias towards protected characteristics belonging to a group historically subject to discrimination. This relatively new juridical category is in tension with penal and constitutional principles. The course aims to explore these problematic profiles, focusing in particular on the main forms of hate crimes: racial, religious, homotransphobic, gender and disability hate crimes. Racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, sexism and homotransphobia and also ableism will be studied from the criminal point of view. The analysis will focus both on the Italian legal system, with particular reference to crimes against equality, provided in the criminal code, and on the foreign, European and extra-European legal systems.