Leila Rodriguez

Anthropological cultural expertise is increasingly used in legal proceedings across the United States, Latin America, Europe, and Australia. Expert reports interpret individual behavior within broader sociocultural contexts, aiming to improve access to justice for culturally diverse populations. While scholars recognize its potential, many challenges remain: reinforcing racial, gendered, or colonial inequalities; reconciling anthropology’s dynamic view of culture with law’s fixed conception; and avoiding essentialized representations of communities. Regional differences furthermore shape practice: in the U.S., cultural expertise is most prevalent in immigration courts, while in Latin America it spans criminal, civil, and agrarian cases involving Indigenous, Afrodescendant, and other marginalized groups. This workshop seeks to address four critical gaps in the global field of cultural expertise: fostering cross-national dialogue, incorporating the perspectives of communities represented in court, establishing standards for the validity and reliability of anthropological data, and providing training for anthropologists and legal professionals. The workshops convenes scholars from the U.S. and Latin America, and will result in a book, and open educations materials for anthropologists and legal professionals.