La Corte di Strasburgo e lo spettro dello ius in corpus: suggestioni di diritto interno

With the aim of preserving the freedom of sexual self-determination as an expression of a spouse’s private life, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the wife’s persistent and (according to the French judges, also) unjustified refusal to engage in sexual relations with her husband did not constitute a breach of marital duty. Although not hermeneutically binding with regard to States that are not involved in the case, the ruling is open to criticism insofar as it misconstrues the meaning of the duty of fidelity and denies the value of marriage as the stabilisation of a sexual union.