PUBLIC LAW

Public law is that branch of law which determines and regulates the organization and functioning of the state and other public bodies, both internally and in relation to private individuals. It concerns itself with the conduct required of private individuals in the public sphere as well as with the collection of financial resources used to pursue ends considered public. Public law can be divided up into various branches, e.g. constitutional law, administrative law, criminal law, tax law etc.

PRIVATE LAW

Private law is that branch of the law which regulates relations between citizens and private enterprises. Rather than being enforced by the state, the application of private law is left to the private initiatives of individual citizens.
Private law includes all those laws regarding an individual’s existence, legal capacity and the overall regulation of the various aspects of an individual’s use and enjoyment of economic resources. Private law includes in particular property rights and the law of obligations.
The dividing line between public and private law is not always clear. For example the state may arrogate to itself the performance of functions that were previously left to private citizens (for example, the operation of schools and hospitals). It may apply criminal sanctions in the event of actions that were once considered to be of merely private interest (e.g. introducing new limits to the action of enterprises or establishing innovative laws for the protection of workers or the environment). Equally, it may choose to cease performing certain activities and restore them to the private realm (i.e. privatization).
Meanwhile, private individuals may be awarded concessions to operate public services which entail powers typically exercised by public organizations. Conversely, the state and other public bodies may exercise control over private companies as majority shareholders.

COMMERCIAL LAW

Commercial law regulates commercial and business relations.
It is founded upon the principles of the freedom of public and private economic initiative (article 41 of the Italian Constitution) and state intervention in the economy (article 43 of the Constitution).
Commercial law derives from the Italian civil code but also possesses a degree of autonomy.
The Italian Civil Code does not consider the private enterprise but rather the individual, which article 2082 defines as anybody conducting an organized economic activity for the production or exchange of goods or services on a professional basis.
Economic activity represents a fundamental criteria for qualifying as a private enterprise. Performing “non-economic” activities, even when carried out through an organization, does not constitute private enterprise and the person conducting it is not an entrepreneur.

FAMILY LAW

Family law is the branch of private law regulating family relations. It is contained in book I of the Italian Civil Code as reformed by law no. 151 of 1975.
This latter law brought significant changes to the Italian civil code and introduced a number of important innovations with regard to family law. These included establishing the equal rights of spouses in terms of personal relations and property; assigning parental responsibility over children equally to both parents; introducing the marital property regime of community property; introducing the concept of the family business; establishing additional grounds for the annulment of civil marriages; and abolishing at-fault marriage separation.

CRIMINAL LAW

Criminal law is the body of legislation through which the state seeks to prevent actions or behaviour considered contrary to the ends that it pursues, by applying the threat or deterrent of criminal sanctions. The typical sanction applied to violations of criminal law is the punishment or sentence.
The function of criminal law is to defend society against crime. Alternatively, if we assume a more “dynamic” vision of social life, we can say that criminal law helps ensure the essential conditions for public life by establishing the most suitable sanctions to protect those legal interests and values that are considered to be socially important.
An increasingly widespread requirement to safeguard personal freedom has seen the state intervening to apply punishment only to defend those interests and values that possess constitutional significance or that are seen to possess constitutional significance.

AGENCY AGREEMENTS

Under an agency agreement, one party, the agent, undertakes to promote the conclusion of contracts on the behalf of another party, the principal, on a continuous basis within a designated territory in return for remuneration.
Agents operate at their own risk and possess organizational autonomy, in the sense that there is no employment relationship. The agent is considered a commercial intermediary, or more specifically an independent agent acting on behalf of the principal.
Agency agreements are regulated by article 1742 and subsequent articles of the Italian Civil Code. The law concerning agency agreements was substantially modernized through Legislative Decree no. 303 of 1991 which implemented a European Union directive.
A fundamental element of agency agreements is the right to exclusivity, meaning that the principal may not appoint more than one agent for a single territory and that the agent may not perform the same activities for competitors in the same territory, unless other agreements to the contrary have been reached.
The agent is entitled to receive commission for all valid contracts concluded as well as for contracts concluded directly by the principal in the territory assigned to the agent.
One of the most significant changes that the new legislation has brought in is contained in article 1751 of the Italian Civil Code, which regulates contract termination indemnity and introduces the “European termination indemnity”. The law establishes that the right to receive the termination indemnity is subject to the fulfilment of two requirements and that the amount of the indemnity is no longer fixed but variable. It also establishes the maximum value of the indemnity, which is equal to a year of commission calculated based on the average commission received by the agent over a period of five years.
Finally the law establishes the criteria of fairness in relation to the calculation of commission lost by the agent as a result of termination.
The introduction of the new criteria for determining the indemnity has led to numerous disputes in relation to both the conditions of eligibility and the calculation of the amount of the termination indemnity.