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49 Ariz. L. Rev. 911 (2007)
Cultural Convergence: Interest Convergence Theory Meets the Cultural Defense

handle is hein.journals/arz49 and id is 929 raw text is: CULTURAL CONVERGENCE: INTEREST CONVERGENCE THEORY MEETS THE CULTURAL DEFENSE Cynthia Lee* Defendants who successfully introduce cultural evidence in their defense have one thing in common--the cultural norms underlying their claims are either similar to or complement American cultural norms, including retrograde racist and sexist norms. This Article argues that cultural convergence is one way to understand these results. Cultural convergence is the idea that the cultural defense claims of minority and immigrant defendants are more likely to receive accommodation when there is convergence between their cultural norms and American cultural norms. * Cynthia Lee is a Professor of Law at the George Washington University Law School. I want to thank my colleague W. Burlette Carter for conversations that led to this piece. I also thank Christopher Bracey, Donald Braman, Richard Delgado, Natalya Domina, Roger Fairfax, Dan Kahan, Nancy Kim, Fred Lawrence, and Kevin Washburn, who read earlier drafts of this Article and provided excellent feedback. A big thanks to the participants at the Third Annual Criminal Justice Roundtable at Yale Law School in April 2007 who provided useful comments, including Rachel Barkow, Guyora Binder, Donald Braman, Paul Butler, Frank Rudy Cooper, Tino Cuellar, Allison Danner, Bernard Harcourt, Dan Kahan, Maximo Langer, [an Haney L6pez, Tracey Meares, Ken Simons, David Sklansky, Carol Steiker, Kate Stith, Bill Stuntz, and Ronald Sullivan. I also thank Maggie Chon, Julian Cook, Marjorie Florestal, Lolita Buckner Innis, Adele Morrison, Reggie Oh, Radha Pathak, Sean Scott, and Frank Valdes for extremely helpful feedback when I presented this paper at the 2006 Western Law Professors of Color Conference in San Diego, California in April 2006. 1 also appreciate the comments made by Elaine Chiu, Rashmi Goel, Jancy Hoeffel, Kay Levine, Kenneth Nunn, and Linda Friedman Ramirez, at the ABA-sponsored symposium on Culture and Crime held at the University of Florida Levin College of Law on April 2, 2005. 1 thank Peter Blum, Atiba Ellis, Steven Jamar, Michael Newsom, and Josephine Ross for feedback when I presented this paper at Howard Law School in the Fall of 2006. Cynthia Brougher, Phil Cardinale, Peter Feldman, and Hans-Christian Latta provided excellent research assistance. Parts of this Article are adapted with permission from CYNTHIA LEE, MURDER AND THE REASONABLE MAN: PASSION AND FEAR IN THE CRIMINAL COURTROOM (2003).

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