Colonial Discourse and Gender in U.S. Criminal Courts

This book illuminates how "cultural evidence" ("evidence" regarding ethnicity) is negotiated by attorneys, witnesses, and defendants in criminal trials. Braunmühl argues that the controversy regarding the legitimacy of a "cultural defense" has tended to obscure its origin in colonialist and patriarchal discourses, and has been biased against minorities as well as all women from its inception.