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This study deals with aspects related to the procedure of recourse in cassation, which involves two stages: the admissibility in principle, which plays the role of a filter of recourses in cassation, and the examination of the recourse in cassation after the admission in principle. There are presented the effects of the recourse and the solutions that can be given for its settlement, underlining their lack of correlation with the cases of recourse in cassation, where appropriate, in the light of the decisions of the High Court of Cassation and Justice. Likewise, the decisions of the Constitutional Court and the legislative amendments operated so far concerning the trial procedure of the recourse in cassation will be considered. -
The new legislative context was a strong argument, mainly, for reconfiguring the recourse, which is not a new legal remedy for our system of law, the cassation recourse being actually built on the structure of the recourse of the previous Criminal Procedure Code, with no fundamental differences in this regard. Article 433 of the Criminal Procedure Code expressly provides the purpose of the cassation recourse, which seeks to subject to the High Court of Cassation and Justice the examination, under the terms of the law, of the conformity of the challenged judgment with the applicable rules of law. However, the cassation recourse aims at ensuring a uniform practice at the level of the entire country. There are expressly provided the judgments which can be challenged by means of the cassation recourse, as well as those that are not subject to this extraordinary legal remedy. In relation to the specificity of this extraordinary legal remedy, the code imposes strict conditions on the contents of the application for cassation recourse, the holders and the time limit for bringing this action, aspects presented within the paper, being followed up all the legislative amendments that have occurred so far. -
This paper provides a legal analysis of rules in the new (Romanian) Civil Procedure Code on ensuring a unitary judicial practice, i.e. the appeal in the interest of law and, respectively, the referral to the High Court of Cassation and Justice for a preliminary ruling on the settlement of matters of law. While the appeal in the interest of law existed also in the previous Civil Procedure Code, the referral to the High Court of Cassation and Justice is a new procedure, not regulated by the previous Civil Procedure Code. -
The Romanian Civil Procedure Code currently in force regulates, among others, the cross-appeal and the caused appeal, but these remedies are not regulated in the hypothesis of the (extraordinary) second appeal. The new Romanian Civil Procedure Code (published on 15 June 2010, but not yet in force) enacts both the caused cross-appeal and the caused cross-second appeal. After presenting the new regulation, the authors consider that, while the cross-/caused appeal is justified (since the appeal is a devolutionary remedy), the cross-/caused second appeal is not justified, since it is not compatible with the specific nature of the extraordinary second appeal. -
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The paper deals with the correct interpretation of statutory provisions governing the written reproduction of audio or video conversations and communications intercepted and recorded, including those conducted in other language than Romanian. The author argues that it is imperative that legal practice accounts for matters dealt with in order to avoid abuses in this area, resulting in deprivation of effects of material drafted in breach of the law. There are also highlighted the main changes operated in this area by the new Code of Criminal Procedure. -
Reopening the criminal trial in case of the judgment in the absence of the convicted person – an extraordinary means of appeal whose admissibility is subsumed to a set of conditions and requirements the fulfilment of which is meant to offer to the defendant the guarantee of a fair trial. -
The study contains an analysis of the theoretical and practical aspects concerning the extraordinary judicial remedy of reopening criminal proceedings in case of trial in absence of the convicted person in the light of the new Criminal Procedure Code. First, the author presents the reasons for imposing the establishing of an effective remedy in the positive law through which the person on trial in absentia can obtain a retrial in his presence. Further on, after a review of the evolution of national legislation in the field of safeguards for retrial of the person on trial in contumacy, the author of the study emphasizes the meaning conferred by the Romanian legislator to the notion of „trial in absence”. Similarly, there are treated the conditions and the procedure of reopening the criminal proceedings, the particularities of retrial and, finally, the concurrence between the procedural mechanism of reopening criminal proceedings and other judicial remedies – the appeal and the contestation for annulment. Likewise, the author also makes some proposals de lege ferenda for the purpose of improving the regulation of the analyzed institution and of avoiding the appearance of some non-unitary practices during its application. -
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Pursuant to Article 1541 (1) b) of the new Romanian Civil Code, which entered into force on 1 October 2011, the court may reduce the amount of the penal clause if „the penalty is clearly excessive as compared to the prejudice which could have been provided by the parties upon the conclusion of the contract”. The author considers that the text is incomplete, in the sense that it does not specify whether the reduction of the penalties may be ordered by the court only on the debtor’s request (the system referred to in BGB – the German Civil Code) or also ex officio (a system presently regulated by the French Civil Code). The author believes that the reduction of the amount of penalties in question can not occur ex officio because fundamental principles of civil proceedings (especially the principle of availability) are violated. Finally, the author proposes an amendment of Article 1541 (1) b) of the Civil Code in order to be expressly stated whether the reduction of penalties occurs only on request or also ex officio. -
Under Article 1541 (1) b) of the new Romanian Civil Code, among the conditions in which the court may reduce the quantum of the penalty is also the condition that the penalty should be clearly excessive in relation to the damage that could be provided by the parties upon the conclusion of the contract. This text of the new Romanian Civil Code, which entered into force on 1 October 2011, has generated a controversy, in the sense that, once the „clearly excessive” character of the penalty has been retained, the court shall be required to proceed to the reduction thereof or, on the contrary, it has only a faculty (possibility) to proceed as such. In the opinion of the author of the study, the second interpretation is the judicial one. -
Currently, the law governing the criminal clause institution are laid down in Articles 1538 to 1543 of the new Civil Code. What holds the special interest of the legal literature, and, in particular, that of practitioners, is the court’s possibility to reduce the criminal clause where the principal obligation has been executed by the debtor (creditor’s advantage) and where the penalty is clearly excessive in relation to the damage that could have been set out by the parties upon the contract conclusion. This study presents the legal, doctrinal and jurisprudential evolution of criminal clause reducibility.
