ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how anthropologists and other experts become involved with legal proceedings and what happens in their encounters with the law and with lawyers from the perspective of multiculturalism. Contemporary societies are to varying degrees multi-ethnic and multicultural with diversity stemming largely from the immigration and settlement of workers and refugees. Often in response to the rise of populist movements that articulate and channel concerns about immigration and cultural differences, sometimes hysterically and in a xenophobic manner, there have been innumerable local, national and international policy initiatives. The governance of multicultural societies has historically involved much discussion of what to do about ethnic, cultural and religious diversity, with the limits of what is or is not to be tolerated under constant scrutiny. Encounters in court between the law and cultural experts play a small but not insignificant role in what is often a painful process of boundary negotiation.
