Austin Sarat 
Cultural Expertise and Socio-Legal Studies 
Special Issue

This special issue of Studiesin Law, Politics, and Society aims to foster a dialogue that is inclusive, constructive, and innovative in order to lay the basis for evaluating theusefulness and impact of cultural expertise in modern litigation. Itinvestigates the scope of cultural expertise as a new socio-legal concept thatbroadly concerns the use of social sciences in connection with rights and thesolution of conflicts. While the definition of cultural expertise is new, theconflicts it applies to are not, and these range from criminal law to civillaw, including international human rights. In this special issue, socio-legal scientists withinterdisciplinary backgrounds scrutinize the applicability of the notion ofcultural expertise in Europe and the rest of the World. Cases include murder, female genital mutilation, earthquake claims, Islamic law, underage marriages, child custody, adoption, land rights, and asylum. The authors debate on avariety of themes, such as legal pluralism, ethnicity, causal determinism, reification of culture, and the "culturalization" of defendants. The volume concludes with an overview of the ethical implications of the definitionof cultural expertise and suggestions for a way forward.