When Should ‘Cultural Difference’ Be Allowed as a Legal Defense?

[WSJ Law Blog]

Here's an interesting question raised in this AP article: At what point can "cultural difference" be used as a defense to a criminal accusation?

“America is supposed to be a country made up of so many different cultures,” said Afolabi’s lawyer, Bukie Adetula. Look to the interpretations of acts, before you say: ‘Oh, it’s an offensive act, it’s against the law, it amounts to human slavery.”

Others say no, that in many instances, actions are criminalized because they’re wrong in an absolute — not relative — sense. “We don’t want to water down our rule of law,” said Kent Scheidegger, the legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, to the AP.

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