Confluenze e interferenze fra morale e diritto: sguardi attraverso le sentenze penali dell’Otto-Novecento

Expressions and words such as “public morality”, “honor”, “modesty”, “scandal”, “obscenity”, open a diaphragm between law and society, through which the sphere of morality is particularly solicited, understood as a set of socially shared (or imposed) values and models in a historically given society. Between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the case law relating to crimes against public morality proves to be a particularly useful field of investigation to enhance the problematic and unavoidable (both in the full liberal age and in the fascist age) links between morality, particularly the sexual one, and criminal law. The present paper intends to propose aninsight to these links from within the case law itself, that is, assuming as a focus of investigation the judicial decision as a text and as a form of legal discourse, within the framework of the theory and practice of argumentation, its strategies and tools.