ATTO GIURIDICO
From the human act considered in the moral order is distinguished the legal act (atto giuridico), which is any act that has legal relevance, or the document containing the ascertainment of a fact relating to a right, as in the expressions “public act,” “private act,” “birth certificate,” “baptismal certificate,” etc. This dual meaning is confirmed by the use of the term atto in both senses by the legislator (e.g., canons 2212 and 1990 of the CIC).
To the act (in the sense of a human action producing legal consequences) is opposed the legal fact (fatto giuridico), which is any event to which the law attaches legal effects, i.e., the creation, extinction, or modification of a subjective right or legal duty, or of a personal status. The legal fact as such may be independent of human will (e.g., the birth or death of a person, the passage of a period of time, etc.); conversely, human will may be an element that substantially determines the production of the legal effect. In the first case, we have the legal fact in the strict sense; in the second case, we have the legal act. The difference between the two categories lies solely in whether or not the will of the person is the element envisaged by the law for attaching certain legal effects. In reality, there are voluntary acts of man that are facts, not legal acts, because the law attaches legal effects purely to the material fact produced by the will of the person, independently of any intention to obtain those effects. For example, if death were willed by a person aiming through it to obtain certain effects for his heirs, such a will would be legally irrelevant because the law links legal effects to the event of death as such and not to the will of the person. In the legal act, the will of the person is sometimes required to be enduring, so that the legal effect is recognized as long as that state of will persists (e.g., in Roman marriage); however, far more frequent are the voluntary acts in which a single initial act of will suffices for the law to attribute legal effects to them, and it is to this category that the term legal act should properly be reserved.
Legal acts may be classified according to various criteria.
First, they may be distinguished into lawful and unlawful acts: the latter are acts prohibited by law; the former are all others. Unlawful acts are called crimes (reati) if they are punished by criminal law, i.e., if a penalty is prescribed against those who commit them. Lawful acts are called, according to recent terminology, obligatory or mandatory acts (atti dovuti od obbligatori) when it is forbidden to omit them.
Another important distinction is that between unilateral, bilateral, and complex acts. The first consist in the activity of a single subject (e.g., a will) or of multiple subjects acting in a single direction (e.g., renunciation of a right made jointly by multiple guardians of it); bilateral acts, by contrast, are those in which multiple subjects act in two opposing but convergent directions (e.g., a contract); complex acts (whose notion, however, varies greatly among writers) would be those in which to the activity of the principal subject(s) (parties) is added that of another public or private subject, in the form of consent, approval, confirmation, and the like.
Acts are further distinguished into inter vivos or between living persons, and mortis causa, according as they are intended to produce their effects during the lifetime of the author(s) of the act or independently of their death (marriage, contract, etc.), or only after the death of the author or of one of the parties involved in the act (e.g., a will).
Acts are said to be formal or solemn when they cannot be validly performed except in one or more forms prescribed by law; non-formal acts are those for which the law prescribes no specific form and which may therefore be validly performed in any suitable form.
According to the subject of the act, a distinction is made between public and private acts: the former have as their author (at least one, if there are multiple authors) a public authority acting in that capacity, and are further subdivided according to the nature of such authority and the content of the act into legislative, administrative, and judicial or jurisdictional acts; private acts are those whose subjects are all private persons, or, if they involve subjects invested with public authority, in which such subjects act in a private capacity.
In addition to these distinctions, common to every legal system, there are some peculiar to canon law. In this system, for example, public acts may be distinguished into acts of the power of order and acts of the power of jurisdiction; the latter, in turn, into acts of jurisdiction in the external forum and acts of jurisdiction in the internal forum; and finally, those of the external forum may be further subdivided into legislative, administrative, and judicial acts.
Fundamental, especially in civil law, is the distinction—though not always consistently understood—between the legal act in the strict sense and juridical transactions (negozi giuridici). For this, as well as for the requirements (elements) of legal acts, see NEGOZIO GIURIDICO.
For the distinction between acts of ordinary administration and acts exceeding ordinary administration, see AMMINISTRAZIONE (atti di).
BIBL.:
Pio Cipriotti, *Il negozio giuridico nel diritto canonico*, Roma 1938.