How to use the Guidebook

This Guidebook is designed as an aid to the work of judges operating in multicultural societies. It can be read in its entirety by judges in order to have an overview of some of the most frequent cultural practices that come to the attention of Italian and comparative courts and, subsequently, consulted on a case-by-case basis by reading the individual cultural practice that may arise in a trial.
If the behaviour at trial is included among the cultural practices in this Guidebook, the judge may read the "cultural test" compiled for the individual cultural case in order to acquire a basic anthropological knowledge of the characteristics, functions and values underlying the behaviour as well as a hypothesis of balancing the party's right to perpetuate the cultural behaviour with any other rights at stake. The judge may supplement the anthropological research offered in this Guidebook with the help of a cultural expert; likewise, with respect to the rights to be balanced, the judge may supplement the proposal in this Guidebook on the basis of his or her own assessments.
The Guidebook does not contain all existing cultural practices, as it is an illustrative tool, so the absence of the practice from the Guidebook does not mean that it does not exist and that the cultural reasons put forward by the party are not real. Whenever the judge is faced with a foreign subject, it is a good idea to always check, even if the lawyer has not raised any cultural defence, whether the behaviour being tried has any cultural component.

Since some cultural practices are widespread among several groups, in the event that the Guidebook does not include such groups in the description of the practice, this may be due to a limitation of the research, so it may be necessary to supplement the investigation with the help of a cultural expert from that group.
The Guidebook can also be used as a template for future cultural expertise (in Italian CTU, technical office consultations) that the judge may require: since anthropologists often need to know what kind of information the judge wants to know, the 'cultural test' could form the canvas of the questions to be asked to the cultural expert (CTU).
This Guidebook should not be used as a definitive tool, but as an accompaniment to the decision. In particular, the questions of the proposed 'cultural test' with which the practices are presented in the special part should not be conceived in an absolute way: such as in the sense that they must all be answered positively for the cultural practice to be recognised. It is possible that some questions in the test may not be answered positively and nevertheless the cultural practice may be recognised. Furthermore, it is possible that the judge supplements the test questions with his or her own evaluations and additional questions, in their own analysis.