L'uguaglianza formale e sostanziale tra libertà e giustizia 'contrattuale'

The essay aims to verify if and in what way the contractual freedom can be reconciled with the judicial review on the justice of the contract. From this perspective, the legal system cannot replace the will of the contracting parties, imposing or prohibiting a specific negotiating regulation deemed "just" or "unfair" a priori, but it can disapprove of those agreements that ex post are illegally imposed by the stronger party. According to this logic, judicial control over private autonomy is admitted only in cases where any inequity reflects inequalities between the parties as one of them has wrongly taken advantage of it. However, given that some disparity between the contracting parties is found in all exchanges, a rebalancing intervention cannot be general nor be carried out indiscriminately, but is legitimized only in the presence of certain normative situations that justify it rationally. In these cases, contractual justice takes place in the form of protection of the weaker contractual party with respect to abuses of the stronger one that prevented him from effectively exercising his autonomy.