Dalla Cultural Defense al "test culturale": luci e (soprattutto) ombre del dibattito italiano

Recently, the interest of part of the Italian legal scholarship, engaged in a reflection on the culturally-motivated crimes and cultural defense for a long time, turned its focus on the development of a "cultural test". Indeed, according to some scholars, judicial courts already implicitly implemented a valid cultural test. However, in the article I try to point out how even those judicial decisions considered as "enlightened" are the signal of the general confusion that still hovers over the categories used in the debate and in particular of a persistent patriarchal "vice" within the internal legal culture. Nonetheless, in my proposal I do not consider that this vice invalidates the opportunity of resorting to cultural tests. Rather, it requires a formulation that is at least partially different from those already proposed by scholars. The contribution will finally prevent judges from using the cultural argument in a way that is oppressive for women and stigmatizing for the cultural group, in accordance to the provisions of the Istanbul Convention.

Parole chiave:Cultural test, Cultural defense, Culturally motivated crime, Culture, Women

• Pluralismo religioso e garanzie del Diritto Penale. Il difficile bilanciamento tra libertà individuali ed esigenze di tutela della collettività (Religious Pluralism and Resistance to the Guarantees of Criminal Law. The Difficult Balance between Individual Liberties and Social Rights) Maria Ilia Bianco, in SSRN Electronic Journal /2018
  DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.3300112

Laura Scudieri, Dalla Cultural Defense al "test culturale": luci e (soprattutto) ombre del dibattito italiano in "SOCIOLOGIA DEL DIRITTO " 1/2018, pp 125-154, DOI: 10.3280/SD2018-001006