Delimiting the Culture Defense (original) (raw)
Related papers
On the Boundaries of Culture as an Affirmative Defense
A cultural defense to criminal culpability cannot achieve true pluralism without collapsing into a totally subjective, personal standard. Applying an objective cultural standard does not rescue a defendant from the external imposition of values - the purported aim of the cultural defense - because a cultural standard is, at its core, an external standard imposed onto an individual. The pluralist argument for a cultural defense also fails on its own terms - after all, justice systems are themselves cultural institutions. Furthermore, a defendant's background is already accounted for at sentencing. The closest thing to a cultural defense that a court could adopt without damaging the culpability regime is a narrow de minimis rule.
Cultural Law
Legal issues may lead multiple lives. They can be political, economic, social, historical, or cultural. Normally, the particular classification of an issue, in the abstract, is not so important. What is important, however, is to understand how a particular nonlegal dimension may condition the analysis of an issue and the appropriate response to it. Gaining this understanding is a matter not only of viewpoint or specialized information but also of professional skill. It is a skill that is best acquired by gaining a comprehensive understanding of the manifold ways in which a particular dimension of human experience-for our purposes, the cultural dimension-affects the legal process. The first two chapters in this book address the problem of cultural conflict, the interaction of culture and law, a working definition of cultural law, and the characteristics of both culture and law. The remaining chapters examine the interaction of culture and law in specific contexts of cultural expressions, practices, and activities such as art, traditional knowledge, sports, and religion. We begin this chapter by considering how the cultural dimension of legal issues in both private sectors and public sectors, including the principle of cultural diversity, may be significant in dispute resolution and ordinary legal discourse. The examples are neither definitive nor comprehensive, but only suggestive. The chapter concludes by broadly defining the discipline of cultural law as a set of relationships.
Justice in many rooms since Galanter: de-romanticizing legal pluralism through the cultural defense
Law & Contemp. Probs., 2008
Marc Galanter's article, 'Justice in Many Rooms' (1981) was prescient in recognizing that nonstate law was not necessarily kinder and gentler than state law. While many writing in the 1970s and 80s celebrated nonstate law as more egalitarian and less coercive than state law, Galanter held back. Post-1980s critiques of the cultural defense, particularly by Asian American feminist lawyers, have also contributed to a shift in the scholarly perception of nonstate law. In the spirit of Galanter's piece, the cultural defense debate should be read not just as a discussion about multicultural tolerance, but also as an integral part of the legal pluralism literature.
Legal Theory and the Variety of Legal Cultures
Journal of Civil Law Studies, 2010
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INTERCULTURAL JUSTICE. Cutting across the cultural boundaries of legal norms
in Luc Foisneau, Christian Hiebaum, Jean-Christophe Merle, Juan Carlos Velasco (eds.): Spheres of Global Justice, Vol. 1, Global Challenges to Liberal Democracy. Political Participation, Minorities and Migrations. Dordrecht, Springer, 2013, pp. 217-226. ISBN: 978-94-007-5997-8
This paper focuses on the demands of legal self-regulation by minority groups and on the cultural rootedness of legal norms. Both issues are indirectly connected: from a liberal point of view, the recognition of multicultural jurisdictions can only be granted as a well justified exception under the control of a deliberative public sphere; on the other hand, the reasonability of cultural immunities, and therefore their political legitimacy, greatly depends on the intercultural understanding and the normative translation of the social goods and principles implied by them. After considering several experiences of aboriginal justice in Latin America, of religious arbitration in Canada and Great Britain, and the discourse of Islamic feminism, this paper concludes that the accommodation of legal pluralism under the rule of law still depends on an intercultural, i.e. post-liberal, public sphere as a testing ground for its deliberative legitimation.
Three Approaches to Law and Culture
2011
This article discusses three major approaches connecting culture to law. The first is the historical school that arose in German jurisprudence in the first half of the nineteenth century. It views law as a product of a nation’s culture and as embedded in the daily practices of its people. The second approach is the constitutive approach that developed in American jurisprudence in the 1980s. This approach views law as participating in the constitution of culture and thereby in the constitution of people’s minds, practices, and social relations. The third approach, found in twentieth-century Anglo-American jurisprudence, views the law that the courts create and apply as a distinct cultural system. Law practitioners internalize this culture in the course of their studies and professional activity, and this internalization comes to constitute, direct, and delimit the way these practitioners think, argue, resolve cases, and provide justifications. The writings of Karl Llewellyn, James Bo...
Cultural evidence in courts of law
Journal of The Royal Anthropological Institute, 2008
This paper examines the problems arising when culture is teleologized in courts of law, by being treated as ‘objective evidence’ or as the direct cause of persecution or delinquency. It starts by explaining the role of expert witnesses, and the kinds of evidence they can and cannot provide. It then addresses the widespread use, especially in the United States, of the ‘cultural defense’ in cases involving immigrant or minority defendants. It summarizes anthropological approaches to the notion of culture; the ongoing debate between rights-based and culture-based approaches to international law; and the impact upon anthropology of current notions of legal and cultural pluralism. Finally, it briefly addresses the treatment of anthropological evidence in English courts, with special reference to asylum appeals under the rubric of the 1951 Refugee Convention.This paper examines the problems arising when culture is teleologized in courts of law, by being treated as ‘objective evidence’ or as the direct cause of persecution or delinquency. It starts by explaining the role of expert witnesses, and the kinds of evidence they can and cannot provide. It then addresses the widespread use, especially in the United States, of the ‘cultural defense’ in cases involving immigrant or minority defendants. It summarizes anthropological approaches to the notion of culture; the ongoing debate between rights-based and culture-based approaches to international law; and the impact upon anthropology of current notions of legal and cultural pluralism. Finally, it briefly addresses the treatment of anthropological evidence in English courts, with special reference to asylum appeals under the rubric of the 1951 Refugee Convention.RésuméLe présent article étudie les problèmes qui surviennent lorsque la culture est téléologisée dans les tribunaux en étant traitée comme une « preuve objective » ou une cause directe de persécution ou de délinquance. L'auteur commence par expliquer le rôle des experts devant les tribunaux et les types de preuves qu'ils peuvent et ne peuvent pas fournir. Il étudie ensuite l'usage très répandu, notamment aux États-Unis, de la « défense culturelle » dans les cas impliquant des accusés issus de l'immigration ou d'une minorité. Il résume l'approche anthropologique de la notion de culture, le débat en cours entre les approches du droit international basées sur les droits et celles basées sur la culture, et l'impact sur l'anthropologie des notions actuelles de pluralisme juridique et culturel. Enfin, il aborde brièvement le traitement de la preuve anthropologique dans les tribunaux anglais, en faisant spécifiquement référence aux appels en matière de droit d'asile dans le cadre d'application de la Convention sur les réfugiés de 1951.Le présent article étudie les problèmes qui surviennent lorsque la culture est téléologisée dans les tribunaux en étant traitée comme une « preuve objective » ou une cause directe de persécution ou de délinquance. L'auteur commence par expliquer le rôle des experts devant les tribunaux et les types de preuves qu'ils peuvent et ne peuvent pas fournir. Il étudie ensuite l'usage très répandu, notamment aux États-Unis, de la « défense culturelle » dans les cas impliquant des accusés issus de l'immigration ou d'une minorité. Il résume l'approche anthropologique de la notion de culture, le débat en cours entre les approches du droit international basées sur les droits et celles basées sur la culture, et l'impact sur l'anthropologie des notions actuelles de pluralisme juridique et culturel. Enfin, il aborde brièvement le traitement de la preuve anthropologique dans les tribunaux anglais, en faisant spécifiquement référence aux appels en matière de droit d'asile dans le cadre d'application de la Convention sur les réfugiés de 1951.