Aborto, armi da fuoco e cambiamento climatico. Ovvero sulla privatizzazione del conflitto politico negli Stati Uniti a partire dal trittico di sentenze del giugno 2022 della Corte Suprema

Abstract

In June 2022, the Supreme Court of the United States rendered three fundamental and troubling decisions

on three critical issues: abortion, firearms regulation and climate change. There has been a great deal of

writing about the consequences of these changes in terms of constitutional law and administrative law. On

the contrary, less, if anything, has been said about the private law implications. This research aims at

filling the gap and argues that the stance taken by the Supreme Court in the three decisions is likely to

increase the use of tort law, and of civil litigation, as a tool to wage political struggle, both in conservative

and progressive terms. From a comparative point of view, such a phenomenon is of particular interest, since

in the European context, and particularly in the Italian one, an increasing number of climate change

disputes are currently being brought before the courts, using civil liability rules as an instrument of regulation

through litigation. The comparison with the U.S. legal system will therefore be instructive in addressing the

perils and promise of employing tort law and civil litigation in the optics of the privatization of political

conflict.