Alternative Dispute Resolution and Legal Pluralism: A Bird's Eye View on Italy

The contribution focuses on the role of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) in relation to legal pluralism. It underlines the relevance of the relationship between ADR and access to justice, and uses a comparative approach on how this instrument is used to respond to new demands of justice. It starts from the Italian legal system, analysing its role in the protection of individual rights, particularly in the field of consumer protection, where the influence of EU law is significant. Secondly, it analyzes the use of ADR mechanisms to evade the ordinary justice system, resorting to informal justice systems that develop in the context of specific communities. In particular, the contribution focuses on the Barbagian revenge system, which has been studied by legal anthropologists. While these two kinds of ADR systems might look very different, in fact they display some similar elements, because they are both related to the need to express different principles, protect specific interests, involve different actors, use different procedures and produce different results. In this way, they both complement ordinary justice, although the level of friction, and the potential risk of conflicts with it, is different.