Equality and Cultural Difference in Portuguese Judicial Practice: Challenges and Opportunities in Building an Inclusive Society (InclusiveCourts)
InclusiveCourts is an interdisciplinary research project which seeks to contribute to a better understanding of the legal challenges raised by cultural diversity in Europe. It focuses on the practice of the courts because of the important role that domestic courts have been taking on as places of encounter and tension among different cultures and legal traditions, in a growing context of legal pluralism and interlegality. The project maps and assesses the way in which courts act in cases involving ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities (what is commonly referred as ‘multicultural jurisprudence’), namely, the way courts use concepts such as race, culture, ethnicity and religion; the way they interpret the principle of equality and balance it with respect for cultural difference; their openness to cultural arguments and evidence and the weight that they accord such arguments/evidence in their rulings. The project was funded by the FCT between 2018 and 2022 with ref. PTDC/DIR-OUT/28229/2017. Since 2022, the research into the multicultural jurisprudence of Portuguese courts continues through Patrícia Jerónimo’s participation as country expert for Portugal in the project CUREDI (Cultural and Religious Diversity under State Law across Europe), coordinated by Marie-Claire Foblets at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropologie, in Halle, Germany.
Duration: 2022