Law, Courts, and Steel. Legal Mobilization and Environmental Justice in Taranto, Italy

This paper discusses the role of law and courts in the fight for environmental justice and public health that has been ongoing in the city of Taranto, Italy, for more than a decade. Battling against the local steel factory, the largest in Europe and the biggest employer locally, local social movements and individuals have engaged in several forms of protests to stop the factory’s production, which several epidemiological studies have linked to the excesses of mortality and morbidity in town. Among these protests, individuals and social movements have also initiated lawsuits at the local, national, and European levels, obtaining, so far, positive verdicts. Nonetheless, for more than a decade, every incumbent national government in Italy has passed legislation to ensure the continuation of the factory’s production, due to its centrality in the national and local economy. These laws have been passed in response to social movements’ and individuals’ prior victories in tribunals, which have, in turn, been called upon to intervene by social movements and individuals in response to the political (in)action of the Italian state government. This shows how law has become a field where the fight for environmental justice in Taranto is battled, and courts in particular have become the center stage of this conflict. Building on several months of ethnographic fieldwork in Taranto and on the analysis of legal documents, this paper examines the implication of this case study for the role of law and courts in the fight for environmental justice. In particular, it draws on the concepts of legal mobilization and lawfare to discuss how environmental justice is fought for within the institutional structure of Europe’s plural legal and political system, and its socio-cultural underpinnings and implications.