Where are the duplications likely to be ?
I have the normal tomcat 7 lib folder, nothing added or taken away.
If I use (so the jar is not deployed):
<dependency>
<groupId>javax.servlet</groupId>
<artifactId>jstl</artifactId>
<version>1.2</version>
<scope>provided</scope>
</dependency>
I get
javax.servlet.ServletException: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: javax/servlet/jsp/jstl/core/ConditionalTagSupport
But when I remove scope provided and deploy the jstl jar I get warnings starting with :
INFO: TLD skipped. URI: http://java.sun.com/jstl/core_rt is already defined