Abstract – This paper discusses the relationship between cultural values and the law in multicultural societies through the perspective of a particular case in point. After an overview of the legal debate in Italy about allowing Sikhs to carry a kirpan in public places, the paper focuses on a series of recent judgments of the Court of Cassation and examines Cass. 24084/2017 in particular. The paper proposes an interpretation of this judgment that emphasizes the need to identify a core of shared values between the immigrant and the host country. At the same time, the Court’s traditional unwillingness to understand culturally motivated crimes as diminishing the defendant’s culpability indicates the reason for the unconcern of the judgment in question for the immigrant’s own values: cultural values cannot prevail over the law—neither can they reinforce it. Ultimately, multicultural societies can only exist within the boundaries of fundamental legal principles; this, the paper concludes, is what the Court intended to reassert through the judgment in question.
Keywords – Religious symbols, multiculturalism, social integration, kirpan, culturally motivated crimes, legal principles