<![CDATA[The revision of national criminal law through the enactment of Law No. 1 of 2023 on the Criminal Code includes provisions on adultery and cohabitation in Articles 411 and 412 as absolute offences. This regulation is intended as a compromise between the protection of moral values and restrictions on state intervention in the private sphere. However, the criminalisation of personal relationships between adults has sparked debate about the limits of the state's legitimacy in interfering in private life, especially when criminal law ideally functions as an ultimum remedium and is only used to prevent real public harm. This study is a normative legal study with a legislative and conceptual approach. The results of the study show that although absolute complaint offences limit law enforcement initiatives to certain parties, criminal status still opens up the potential for state intervention after a complaint is filed. Within the framework of the harm principle, consensual cohabitation relationships are difficult to qualify as acts that cause concrete public harm. Furthermore, based on the principle of proportionality, criminalisation must have a legitimate, necessary and balanced purpose in relation to the restrictions on rights that it imposes. Without proof of a significant social impact, criminalisation has the potential to become a form of over-criminalisation that is not fully in line with the protection of the right to privacy in a democratic state governed by the rule of law]]>
Copyrights © 2026
