Enrico del Prato Private Autonomy and Principle of Subsidiarity PRIVATE AUTONOMY AND PRINCIPLE OF SUBSIDIARITY The text of the speech at the round table on “Law and Justice: Prerequisites for Trust in Law”, at the St Petersburg Legal Forum, May 20, 2016 415 By Enrico del Prato (Italy) Author Full Professor of Civil Law in Sapienza University of Rome, Director of the Law Department Piazzale Aldo Moro, 5, 00185 Roma (RM) Italy enrico.delprato@uniroma1.it Abstract The first expression of legal experience are the social relations. <...> Legal history shows that the development of any legal phenomenon comes from the society. <...> The rise of objective law selects the legally relevant facts of reality and establish its legal relevance. <...> This sums up the meaning of the subsidiarity: the law intervenes, on the one hand, to prescribe and limit the action of the private, on the other hand, to support the civil society to achieve those interests that it, alone, is not able to pursue. <...> It is an expression of the autonomy of trade unions and collective bargaining, the right to define the disputes through arbitrators, that means by a decision not adopted from the state jurisdiction. <...> Volume 2 Оctober 2016 Issue 2(6) www.kulawr.ru 416 KUTAFIN UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW The law, therefore, as we are taught by the tradition of Roman law, is not only the statutes, but the whole legal experience. <...> In a radical schematization, we may discern two different ideas of Law: the first one considers Law as a tool by which organize society towards an optimal desirable model; the second one reduces Law as an instrument to transpose attitudes of civil society in rules. <...> On the contrary there are also branches where they overlap, for example, in Family law, in which customs and conscience notice legal arrangements as expressions of social reality. 1 Justice, Law, Technique, in http://www.spblegalforum.ru/en/2016_ Plenary_ Session (text of the speech in the Plenary session at the St. Petersburg Legal Forum, May 18th , 2016). www.kulawr.ru Volume 2 Оctober 2016 Issue 2(6) Enrico del Prato Private Autonomy and Principle of Subsidiarity 417 2. <...> This principle has been expressly provided in Italian Constitution in 2001 (Article 118, par. 4, and Article 120, par <...>