La Corte di Cassazione contro lo stereotipo della “madre malevola”

In recent years, legal-philosophical and feminist-legal scholars have increasingly highlighted the dynamics of testimonial injustice and stereotyping within judicial contexts, emphasizing their impact on historically marginalized groups. This paper aims to demonstrate how expert knowledge can also serve as a vehicle for harmful stereotypes within legal proceedings. In particular, it will examine the figure of the so-called “malevolent mother” and the use of pseudoscientific constructs such as Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) and Maternal Malicious Syndrome (MMS). After providing a preliminary reconstruction of these concepts, the paper will highlight the critical issues arising from the use of such pseudoscientific frameworks, which tend to obscure contexts of gender-based violence under the guise of neutral parental conflict. The analysis will conclude with a discussion of several rulings by the Italian Corte di Cassazione that have rejected the use of PAS, shedding light on the a priori assumptions that not only undermine the concrete assessment of individual cases but also entrench discriminatory judicial practices.