RICERCA ITALIANA     

FAMILY AND LIABILITY

Università degli Studi di Bologna

Abstract

In the field of family relations and protection of the human being, recent years have witnessed the development of particular issues and areas of concern, both on the legislative and on the interpretive side. With regards to such problems it is possible to map the development of more and more significant legal remedies. Thus, the goal of this research – based on a multidisciplinary methodology and that will privilege a comparative approach – focuses on surveying and analysing new hypothesis of civil and criminal liability that, both in the Italian and in foreign legal systems, appear to be connected to the existence or the exercise of legal positions inherent to family relations. Furthermore, the research aims at assessing the transformations, both structural and functional, that took place within the realm of civil and criminal liability with respect to family law, in order to identify and put forward new patterns and understandings.

Principal Investigator

Michele SESTA Università degli Studi di BOLOGNA

Research Objectives

In the field of family relations and protection of the human being, recent years have witnessed the development of particular issues and areas of concern, both on the legislative and on the interpretive side. With regards to such problems, specifically outlined below, it is also possible to map the development of more and more significant legal remedies. The goal of this research, thus, focuses on surveying and analysing new hypothesis of liability, both civil and criminal, that become true not only in the context of intra-family relations, but also in situations that involve third parties alien to the family. The research units, in order to identify the most effective remedies of Italian law, will draw from the insights offered by other European and non-European legal systems which, in some circumstances, provide for more adequate and innovative forms of protection. The analysis of foreign experiences also allows to collect the thrusts coming from several doctrinal backgrounds, and to privilege an examination of different themes of family law in a comparative perspective, so as to enable a measurement of the distances existing among different legal systems in this realm of private law or to remark possible areas of convergence or divergence in the evolution of family law.
In fact, the research aims at analysing, in a comparative perspective, several aspects, such as the relationship between social conceptions of the family and of its internal organisation and the >>>

Timescale

24 months

National and international background

Recent court decisions have put to the attention of theoretical analysis some issues linked to the relationship between the family and tort law rules, both with regards to the occurrence of criminal and civil wrongdoings within the family group, and with regards to the external realm of the theme, namely hypothesis of torts or crimes done by one family member to a third party. From the perspective of civil law, in reasoning upon court decisions legal scholars did not fail to underline the innovative character of the theme at hand, in particular with respect to findings in favour of the family member that had taken to court another member of the group claiming the application of tort law. At the same time, theoretical efforts are directed towards the comprehension of the connections between evolution of family relations and new approaches adopted by courts, as well as the systematic consequences involving structural and functional elements of tort law.
In this context, one finds of particular relevance the topic of damage compensation descending from the infringement of conjugal duties because, especially in light of the constitutional protection of the person and of paramount individual values, the problem arose of assessing whether it would be possible to consider applicable the mechanism of civil liability when one of the spouses appears responsible for the violation of conjugal duties, especially when violations are reiterated and particularly serious.
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