Affinità e divorzio: l'insostenibilità di una disciplina generale e astratta.

This ruling rightly resolves a question concerning the effects of the termination of the civil effects of marriage on relationships by affinity. More interesting than the answer to the specific question, however, is the way in which the issue was framed and resolved. The Constitutional Court deliberately chose to confine its ruling to the specific context in which the question arose, declaring unconstitutional the provision that attached a number of political incompatibilities to the relationship by affinity arising from a marriage whose civil effects had ceased. In essence, the Court did not answer, in general and abstract terms, the question whether affinity is extinguished by divorce. Rather, the answer depends on the scope and purpose of the specific provision that attaches legal consequences to that relationship. The crisis of general and abstract legislation, characteristic of the nineteenth-century model, and the corresponding need to entrust judges with the assessment of the circumstances of the individual case are becoming increasingly apparent.