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In this study, the author brings back to memory a doctrinal discussion, inspired by the decision of a tribunal (seized as a court of judicial control), published by the „Romanian Journal of Law”, in two issues, in the period between 1983 and 1984, a discussion in which its protagonists, accepting the idea of an extensive interpretation of the provisions of the old Civil Procedure Code regarding the procedure of verification of scripts, concluded that this procedure may also cover the application for summons, in case that one of the applicants claims that he did not initiate the trial, the signature on the application is not his, nor did he mandate his brother (the co-applicant) to initiate the trial in his name. The doctrinaires have reached, in illo tempore, to the conclusion that the denial of the signature on the application for summons by the person to whom the document is attributed, in fact challenging of the quality of party to the trial, as an applicant, may be invoked, for the first time, also in the means of appeal, the court of judicial control following to submit the application for the procedure of verification of scripts. The tribunal has appreciated that the verification of the signature on the application for summons could only be made by its indictment as false and sending the case to the prosecutor. This point of view was not accepted by the person filing the recourse who considered that the proof of his statements could also be made through a procedure of verification of scripts of the document, before the civil court (which could order, if necessary, a graphological expertise to be made), not wanting to expose his brother, or himself, to criminal investigations. The fact that the second author involved in the discussion claimed the lack of consistency of the claim that the person filing the recourse has not acquired the quality of party (namely of appellant), since he could only exercise the recourse as a party (and not as a third party), has offered the occasion to the last two authors participating in the doctrinal discussion to make the distinction between the quality of party to the trial and the processual quality. -
The institution of the penal clause, regulated in Articles 1538–1543 of the new Civil Code, still encounters different interpretations, even contradictory sometimes, in the judicial practice and in the solutions of the courts. In particular, the interest of the practitioners and of the specialized doctrine is based on the possibility conferred to the court of law to reduce the penal clause in the two cases provided by the legislator, namely when the main obligation has been executed by the debtor to the benefit of the creditor and when the penalty is clearly excessive in relation to the prejudice which might have been foreseen by the parties on the conclusion of the contract. This study aims to analyse thoroughly the two hypostases in which the judge is allowed to defeat the principle of binding force of the contract and to intervene in the decrease of the quantum of penalties, an analysis materialized both from a theoretical point of view and especially from a practical point of view, offering relevant solutions from the recent judicial practice.
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The provisions of Article 169 of the Law No 85/2014 on the procedures for preventing insolvency and for insolvency regulate the responsibility aimed at covering the debtor’s liabilities in case its assets do not satisfy all the claims of its debtors. The mentioned legal provisions regulate expressly determined cases in which either the members of the supervisory bodies, or the members of the management bodies of the legal person which is in a state of insolvency or any other person that has caused the state of insolvency may be obliged to cover a part of the liabilities of the insolvent debtor, provided that the activity they carried out has led to the insufficiency of the available cash funds from the patrimony of the debtor legal person. In relation to the provisions of Article 171 of the mentioned normative act, the responsibility of the specified persons may be engaged in any form of the procedure, either in judicial reorganization, or in bankruptcy. In case of judicial reorganization, the amounts of money obtained as a result of the responsibility of the mentioned persons are intended to supplement the funds necessary for the continuation of the debtor’s activity, and, in case of bankruptcy, those amounts must ensure that the debtor’s liabilities are covered. The regulation of the responsibility of the members of the supervisory/management bodies or of any other person that has caused the state of insolvency of the debtor legal person is an integral part of the procedure provided by the law on insolvency.
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The declarative establishment of democratic traditions or insurrectional ideals at a constitutional level is legitimate and explicable as an element of public law philosophy and social psychology, but also of national identification, especially in situations where the Constituent Assembly established a democratic political regime, opened to the aspirations of a nation that has liberated itself from the authoritarianism of a tyrannical government system. However, the issue we are raising is whether democratic traditions are justified in a normative regulation. In my opinion, the proper place to preserve the national values and the historical political and juridical traditions of a people cannot be the normative text of the Constitution, because it, as a fundamental normative act, from the point of view of positive law, has the role to regulate political, social and economic relations and others as valid social phenomena measurable politically and legally. The original place of the traditions and values of a community lies in its public consciousness and in the general lifestyle. Here, they retain intact the ideological content and form, as they penetrated through objective scientific knowledge, as well as through a spiritual path in the individual’s consciousness, and extended to successive generations. In this way, democratic traditions acquire an explanatory role for the philosophy of public law. A question arises: if democratic traditions are transposed by constitutional norms in the national legal order and converted into constitutional traditions, can they be challenged scientifically and historically? Contesting the democratic traditions in a scientific work or denying their existence, as well as legislating some areas of social life without considering the Romanian constitutional traditions, are subjected to malpractice or even sanctioned by the law?
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Neutral power can manifest itself in modern liberal democracies also in the form of autonomous authorities. Their neutrality is based on two kinds of reasons. The first category involves the positioning of the neutral authorities outside the separation of powers in the state, their reactive (not active) political character and their role of balancing the separate powers of the state or of balancing the relations between the state and civil society. They are in the Romanian law authorities with constitutional status. The second category of authorities that call/consider themselves neutral founds its position on the neutrality of the experts in their structure. They have in the Romanian Constitution the status of some atypical, autonomous administrative authorities. Modern states are based on political freedom, i.e. on the liberation of man from objective laws. The expression of this freedom substantiates all the institutional mechanisms of modern constitutionalism. In exchange, the autonomous administrative authorities are set up to release the regulation of certain social mechanisms of political influence. They are not based on modern political freedom. Formed of experts who know the „objective” laws of social development and apply them „scientifically”, these authorities are „objective”. It is thus created a dichotomy: the people or the expert? The increasingly dense contemporary option for the expert can lead to significant risks for the human rights and for the democratic system.
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In the present study we will try to find the answer to the question: „What can a natural person do when his/her right to the protection of personal data has been violated?”. The natural person having his/her habitual residence in Romania, who suffered damages in a cross-border context, will be taken as a reference system, in an attempt of „guiding” him/her to the competent authority for dealing with the judicial issues that have arisen. The legal basis for answering the question will be the Regulation (EU) No 679/2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data. In the first part of the study the terms used to explain the right to the protection of personal data and its violation will be clarified, and in the second part the administrative and/or judicial ways that the natural person can follow in order to restore the violated right will be discussed.
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The emergence of the Law No 76/2012 for the implementation of the Law No 134/2010 on the Code of Civil Procedure had great influence on the Government Emergency Ordinance No 34/2006 on the award of public procurement contracts. The latter stated that, in the matter of claims for compensation for damage caused during the public procurement procedure, the way of attack is an appeal on law submitted within 5 days of the communication. Difficulties with the publication and entry into force of the Law No 76/2012 were felt because it provided that the appeal would be the remedy in the matter, but before it came into force, the Government Emergency Ordinance No 34/2006 was amended by the Government Emergency Ordinance No 77/2012 which was approved by the Law 193/2013 and which left unchanged the way of attack. To solve the problems related to the succession in time of the laws, the High Court of Cassation and Justice by the Decision No 20/2015 of 5 October 2015 on the examination of the appeal in the interest of the law formulated by the Board of the Suceava Court of Appeal determined that the appeal on law is the only way of attack in the matter. Problems of interpretation have not stopped here because, while the High Court has made compulsory the way of attack, it did not make any mention of the term of exercise. Thus, a non-unitary practice has emerged because some courts have considered that the term of exercise is that of appeal, i.e. 5 days, while others have applied the general term. In our view, the time limit for exercising the appeal on law cannot be considered to be 5 days, because in this situation it would only mean that there was a replacement of the term „appeal” with „appeal on law”, but the general term provided by the Code of Civil Procedure shall apply.
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The study aims to present a case solved by German courts. It was raised the issue of the legal qualification of the winning under a beer cap, on terms of several people having put together the money for purchasing two boxes of beer and having bought them for that amount, including the bottle with the cap which contained the prize. In the case briefly presented it was necessary to determine whether the winning belongs only to the person who discovered the prize under the cap or to all the persons who have contributed with money to purchase the bottle containing the winning cap.
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The idea of a neutral power from those derived from the separation of powers was preceded in the modern epoch by the placing of one of the Chambers of the Parliament in the role of balancing and preserving power. This second Chamber had to be different from the first one, in order for it to be superior. The manner of conceiving this superiority and the balancing and conservative role of this Chamber have been different from one epoch to another and from one system to another. In the following article, subsequent to a brief analysis of the concepts of neutral power and balancing power, I shall investigate the role played by the superior Chamber of Parliament in the constitutional history of Romania.
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In this study, the author analyzes the ratio of the „data of a personal nature” and „personal data” and he draws up an inventory of the most important qualifications offered so far by the doctrine about the legal nature of these data. Finally, the author concludes that „personal data” are intangible movable assets, then he presents a number of practical consequences of this qualification.
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The Decision of the Constitutional Court of Romania No 405/2016, referring to the plea of unconstitutionality of the provisions of Article 246 of the Criminal Code of 1969, of Article 297 (1) of the Criminal Code and of Article 132 of the Law No 78/2000 on preventing, discovering and sanctioning of corruption acts (hereinafter referred to as „Decision No 405”)1, is not a mere interpretative decision2 whereby, following the admission of a plea of unconstitutionality, it is established that a text of law is constitutional only provided that a certain wording has a certain meaning3. The recitals of the Decision No 405, to which there have been added, shortly after, those included in the Decision No 392/2017, referring to the plea of unconstitutionality of the provisions of Article 248 of the Criminal Code of 1969, of Article 297 (1) of the Criminal Code and of Article 132 of the Law No 78/2000 on preventing, discovering and sanctioning of corruption acts4 (hereinafter referred to as „Decision No 392”), have emphasized the fact that the current rules of incrimination of the deeds of abuse of office, once clarified the meaning of the phrase „defectively fulfils”, still establish a criminal liability that rather acts with priority, and not according to ultima ratio principle, and the constitutive elements of the offence do not meet the standards of drafting of such legal norms identified in the case law of the European Court of Human Rights (hereinafter referred to as „ECHR”), the United Nations Convention against Corruption5, as well as in various reports and positions assumed by the European Union bodies on this subject. For the assumption that these observations of the Constitutional Court would determine the legislator to reflect on the necessity to reconfigure the legal provisions in question, the Court has indicated certain points of reference that should be considered in order to ensure a regulation compatible with the international and European standards mentioned.
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In this study, the author starts by finding that there is a divergent case law regarding the admission of the application for declaration of enforceability filed by the court executor under Article 666 of the Civil Procedure Code in the event that the enforcement title is represented by a final judgment whereby the debtor is obliged to pay a sum of money to the creditor and the proof thereof is made by a registry certificate (ad similis, an authenticated copy of the minutes drawn up and signed by the members of the court panel). The author finds that the limited doctrine that analyzed the casuistry described above reaches also diametrically opposite conclusions. In this context, making his own analysis, the author comes to the conclusion that in the above-mentioned hypothesis it is correct the solution of the courts which have admitted the applications for declaration of enforcement, based mainly on arguments related to the probative force of the registry certificate, the existence of the court judgment from the date of its pronouncement in the public hearing as the last stage of the trial (i.e., the first phase of the civil trial), since it has full legal effects, as well as on the desideratum of celerity, which governs the second stage of the civil trial, recte the enforcement. Noting that the existence of a divergent case law by which identical juridical situations are solved is likely to lead to the weakening of trust in the act of justice, the author urges for the most urgent use by the actors entitled ope legis of the means for ensuring a unitary judicial practice stated by the provisions of the Civil Procedure Code and of the Internal Rules of the courts of 2015.
