Matrimonio e convivenze nel pensiero di Francesco Busnelli

This short essay tries to retrace the long itinerary of the thought of Francesco Busnelli, one of the most important Italian legal scholars, about Italian and European family law during the last forty years. On the background of the friction between contractual and institutional conception of the family, Busnelli’s reflection – now collected in the volume “Persona e famiglia” (2017) – aims to develop the idea of family as a community built on the ground of solidarity. From this perspective, a special attention is paid to the duty of fidelity among spouses and to the difference between marriage, non-marital couples and same-sex relationships.