Autonomia privata e costituzione europea

The subject matter of the essay is freedom of contract in the constitutional perspective. The author points out that, after the Weimar Constitution it has been set up a kind of constitutional tradition that ignores private autonomy as a right of liberty to be protected among the others by the Constitution. The same happened with the Treatise on European Constitution, which confirms this trend, probably having its roots in a misunderstanding of what freedom of contract nowadays could be. The author contends this constitutional ignorance of the freedom of contract, emphasizing the different significance that especially the European discipline of contractual protection of consumer could have in a framework represented by a constitutional rule on freedom of contract.