Between Norms and Practice

This article examines how judges in Italy deal with sociocultural diversity in family law cases. The aim is to investigate how understandings about culture are shaped and constructed in legal reasoning and what institutional dynamics influence this process. Based on qualitative research – semi-structured interviews with judges and critical discourse analysis of judicial decisions – the study explores the tension between individually held understandings of culture and the institutional conditions under which legal decisions are produced. Some judges show awareness of the dynamic nature of culture, but such perspectives rarely translate into the rulings. On the contrary, culture is often treated as a fixed attribute, made legible through essentialist classifications shaped by procedural, bureaucratic constraints and reliance on external assessments. Combining Practice-Based Theory and Critical Discourse Analysis, the article shows how judicial reasoning is constructed in routines that reinforce dominant cultural assumptions, suggesting the need for structural change to support more context-sensitive, pluralistic forms of legal interpretation.