The contract: prospects in the Italian experience

In spite of perception of liquidity, common in our experience, a proper understanding of the legal phenomenon known as contract must address legal categories. From this point of view European Union law have brought a mix of categories and meaning, implementing, for example, diffusion of relative forms of invalidity or tendency to prefer extrajudicial nature of remedies. An interesting way for approaching to contract is to understand how a normal agreement receives legal protection, also displaying interests for which it is concluded. According to this method, a first topic regards sources of law and considers not only the supranational dimension of legislation descending - first of all - from European Union, but also the social one, enhanced by the principle of subsidiarity, that gives a renewed role to private autonomy into a system where deregulation - understood as expansion of secondary legislation - seems to erode it in favour of mandatory disciplines dictated by independent administrative authorities (article 118, paragraph 4, Italian Constitution). Another issue may concern good faith and fair dealing, the so-called general clauses that in 1990s supported the awakening of the “fair contract” doctrine. In these perspectives, even if there are many legal systems around the word, differences are more marginal than that appears, because the substance of the contractual phenomenon and the needs to satisfy are almost the same all around the world.