50 Lire Social Justice

San Marino issued a series of themed coins in 1973 tied to specific social and political causes — an unusual move for a microstate whose coinage had previously been almost entirely ceremonial. The "Social Justice" denomination was part of that eight-coin set, each piece assigned a different theme reflecting the progressive political currents running through Italian-sphere politics in the early 1970s. The series coincided with a period when the Sammarinese government was dominated by a Communist-Socialist coalition, one of the few such governing arrangements in Western Europe at the time.