Contatto e diritto: spunti in tema di relazioni giuridiche privatistiche e disciplina emergenziale

Taking as a starting point some of the provisions enacted by emergency legislations during Covid-19 pandemic, the paper focuses on the relevance of human contact for private law relationships and reflects on the related problems and prospects. In fact, the main goal of the said emergency legislation has been the limitation of human contacts, in order to realize social distancing and to contrast the spread of contagion. Therefore, private law relationships have been, on the one hand, limited and, on the other hand, accelerated because of the substitution of human contact with other technological modalities of contact. In the matter of contracts, the paper considers how human contact has historically represented a key element of formalism, and how also past pandemics have determined some evolutions towards less formalistic rules. Then it comes to contemporary emergency legislations on telematic meetings and on non-formalized modalities of contract conclusion in the banking and financial sectors, reflecting on how such modalities could last beyond the end of pandemic. With regard to family law, the paper considers new nonformalized modalities of divorce, but also the more general impact of emergency legislations on the limitation of personal contact. Finally, it underlines how the need for a specific regulation of family contacts has in some cases accelerated the recognition of new family models.