Alison Dundes Renteln, The Cultural Defense. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Pp. 219. Alison Dundes Renteln's The Cultural Defense is a monumental treatise, equally versed in the literature of law and anthropology. The author holds a position in political science at the University of Southern California. Her command of these different fields situates her at the forefront of the growing chorus of scholars who argue--some pro, some con--that it is incumbent on the judiciary to take cultural differences seriously in their adjudication of the legal frictions thrown up by our increasingly multicultural society.
