ABSTRACT
On October 5, 2000, the Church of Scientology won in Milan the mother of all its court cases in Italy, a case that had troubled the Church for some twenty years. This chapter offers a review of the facts leading to the Milan decision, perhaps the most significant in Italy about a new religious movement, and an analysis of the decision itself. In order to understand the Italian legal context, however, it is necessary to start from a short summary of an Italian Constitutional Court decision dating back to 1981 (Corte Costituzionale 1981), which exerted an important influence on the Scientology case.
