Canonical Marriage and the Court of Cassation: Challenges of Reasonableness

Abstract

This paper gets to the heart of the argumentative process, shown in 2014 by the Joined Chambers of the Court of Cassation, related to the inadmissibility, into Italian law, of canonical declarations of invalidity of marriage which have been stated after a long term cohabitation of the parties, as it is contrary to public policy. Outlined the cultural framework which the Italian ruling falls within, in view of a methodological choice that takes advantage of instruments like semantic analysis as part of a specific attention to the interaction between language and law, some implications of call to the principle of reasonableness have been highlighted in civil law and bilaterally. There is even no doubt that Court of Cassation’s arguments represent a challenge for canonical law to activate the means at its disposal, first of all rationabilitas, in order to provide an adequate protection to those aspects of marriage connected to divin right, like the long term cohabitation of spouses.