State legal order and polyculturality

Legal Theory is incumbent to analyze the mechanisms by which legal orders deal with the problems of polyculturality. This article focuses on the issue of community norms, particularly if they are regarded as material facts or as normative facts. The question is whether polyculturality can be the source of a normative fact that must be respected even if it does not agree with the dominant social values in society, or are these values to prevail. Taking into account a wide set of cases, the Author addresses the issue of the conflict of values and how it is – or should be – solved by public powers, taking into stock their function and the concrete cases at hand.