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We are witnessing tremendous progress in the fields of biology and medicine, which consist the possibility to take human cells, tissues and organs for the purpose of their transplantation into another subject’s body, genetic engineering operations, medically assisted human procreation and many other such revolutionary techniques. All of these have proven to be two-edged weapons: on the one hand, they can be used to save lives or to help some couples who, under normal conditions, cannot procreate to give birth to the much-desired children and, on the other hand, they can turn into threats to the human genome or to the social cohesion. It has become necessary for man himself to be the object of legal protection, and, at the same time, a new category of things has emerged, namely the biological products of the human body and the elements detached therefrom, which are intended to be used for therapeutic or research purposes. Thus arose the problem of the legal qualification of these things, which also raised the issue of the existence of a relationship between the subject of law and his body. The doctrinaires are divided into two camps: one that considers that between the subject of law and his body, qualified as a thing, there is a legal relationship of property and another that claims that the human body is the person himself. The qualification of the human body as a thing, the transformation into things of some of its products and of some elements detached therefrom, as well as the possibility of capitalizing on some personality rights, such as the right to voice and the right to image, are part of a process which was called the reification of the person. It is a constantly evolving process which has already included the controversial gestation for another as well. The present study is devoted to the identification of the dangers generated by the qualification of the human body as a thing, with special regard to the gestation for another. -
Simplification and debureaucratization, in many cases, indeed, lead to a positive result. However, the complexity and apparent bureaucratization of some institutions and procedures, in many cases, have a well-defined, useful, even necessary role. The elimination of functional and strict requirements may drive the expected rationalization but an undesirable adverse effect: dysfunctions and legal uncertainty. These ideas can be best illustrated by the recent amendment of the Law No 31/1990 on companies, through Law No 23/2020 for the simplification and debureaucratization of the transfer of shares („social parts”) and the payment of the share capital. Unfortunately, in recent years, the limited liability company has become a subject of experimentation for different improvement attempts, without noticing that companies’ legal regime is an organic whole. Most of the time, reforms are well-intentioned but distorted by enduring normative realities. They also distort the existing law: as is currently the case with share capital and shares transfer. -
The recordings made by technical means have not constituted, at least in civil matters, ever since the appearance of the devices that made them possible, an admissible evidence, not being regulated as such by the legislator in the past. In the new regulations, starting with the Law No 217/2003, including in the new Civil Procedure Code, in the conditions of the extended use of electronic means, both in the institutional framework and in the private life, the daily realities have imposed the use of the recordings with technical means as evidence. However, by operating a generalization, the possibility that the data of any kind to be fixed on a computer-based media has led to the penetration of this kind of probation both in the evidence with written documents, in the form of computer-based written documents, and in that of material means of evidence. The inclusion of the recordings, generically speaking, also in the category of material means of evidence generates problems both in terms of identifying their legal nature, with implications on their administration and storage regime, and in terms of establishing their admissibility conditions. The latter also raise the question of establishing the extent of the probationary area related thereto, respectively whether it should be restricted only to proving those legal relations which the facts of legal relevance involve, as well as which categories among these fall within the scope of circumstances likely to be proved in this way.
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The study analyzes the initial version of the first sentence of Article 426 (5) of the Civil Procedure Code, according to which the judgment had to be drafted within maximum 30 days from the date of pronouncement. In the author’s opinion, such a time limit ensured the achievement of one of the fundamental principles of the civil trial, respectively, the right to a fair trial, in an optimal and predictable time limit, as provided by Article 6 (1) of the Civil Procedure Code. In the version of the Law No 310/2018, the first sentence of Article 426 (5) of the Civil Procedure Code was amended, in the sense of granting the possibility to extend the drafting time limit, over the initial one of 30 days from the date of pronouncement. Thus, for well-grounded reasons, this time limit may be extended by 30 days, at most twice. In the author’s opinion, the total current time limit of 90 days for drafting the judgment is not able to ensure a reasonable time limit for the completion of the trial and should return to the version existing prior to the amendment by the Law No 310/2018, respectively, the time limit of no more than 30 days from the date of pronouncement.
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The interpretation and the application of the provisions of Article 31 (3) and Article 60 of the Labour Code have led to the existence of a non-unitary judicial practice and to the expression of some divergent positions in the doctrine as regards the applicability of the temporary prohibitions on dismissal in case of termination of the individual labour contract at the initiative of the employer, during or at the end of the period of probation. In a first doctrinal and jurisprudential orientation it is argued that Article 60 of the Labour Code is not applicable, because we are not in the presence of a dismissal, but of a separate case of termination of the individual labour contract at the initiative of the employer. The second opinion argues the thesis according to which the termination of the individual labour contract at the initiative of the employer during or at the end of the period of probation is also a case of dismissal, the legislative derogations aiming only at simplifying the dismissal procedure during the period of probation, and not at removing the temporary prohibitions on dismissal provided by Article 60 of the Labour Code.
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The present analysis is justified by the challenges generated by the regulation of the normative framework of public power intervention in the management of some new social realities, with a direct impact on the state-citizen relations, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Undoubtedly, some measures established by the Law No 136/2020 on the establishment of some measures in the field of public health in situations of epidemiological and biological risk, taken most often with celerity, will be subject to the control of legality of the courts of law. It would be absurd for acts that ultimately affect fundamental rights and freedoms not to be subject to the means of appeal and not to pass through the judge’s filter, the latter being the one who will, actually, decide on the fairness of the measure adopted. At the boundary between the analysis of the legality and the appropriateness of the measures adopted by the competent authorities of the state, the court of law will have to rule so that both the citizen, viewed individually, and the community feel safe in front of a threat that humanity never faced before. From this analytical perspective, the authors intend to address the issue of the possibility to invoke in court the exceptions of illegality in the context of the provisions provided by Article 17 of the Law No 136/2020.
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The present study proposes for analysis some of the implications of the pandemic generated by the SARS-CoV-2 virus in the matter of the property right and not only, following to consider the property right in its broad sense, derived from the ECHR case law in the matter. As concerns the research hypothesis, the author starts from the premise that the inclination towards martyrology manifested throughout the history by our country determines that some particularly restrictive measures be adopted also in the context generated by the Covid-19 pandemic, the most often without a solid theoretical foundation. It is also considered, as a research hypothesis, that there is currently a trend worldwide towards authoritarianism and interventionism from the state government, which is reflected in the measures taken during this period in order to prevent the spread of the respiratory virus.
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The new Civil Procedure Code, under the impulse of the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, has established for the first time, in the Romanian law, a procedural means intended to be an effective remedy for unjustified tendencies to delay trials: the contestation regarding the delay of the trial. The present approach was occasioned by a recent decision of unconstitutionality regarding the application of the provisions of Article 524 (3) of the Civil Procedure Code. In the introduction of this study, the author makes a general delimitation of the contestation by other procedural means, stating that it can be qualified neither as means of appeal, nor as a civil action or as a special procedure. The author emphasizes the contestation’s nature of procedural incident and of means to remove any obstruction in the settlement of civil cases in an optimal and predictable time limit. The control of constitutionality carried out by the Court concerns a very concrete aspect of the competence to settle the contestation. Through the analyzed decision, the court of constitutional control has appreciated that the settlement of the contestation by the panel notified with the settlement of the main action is likely to affect the objective impartiality of the court. In the present approach, the author considers such an action of the court of constitutional control as being judicious, but expresses reservations regarding the solution of attributing the competence to settle the contestation to the higher court. In justifying this point of view, the author notes also the existence of other similar procedural means the settlement of which is given, however, in the competence of a panel of the court empowered to judge the main action as well. On the other hand, the settlement of the contestation by the superior court is not likely to provide celerity in its settlement.
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An attack on a moral right must attain a certain level of seriousness in order to attract the application of a sanction. When the exercise of a moral right, freedom of expression especially, interfere with the exercise of some other moral rights, in order to determine if the right was exercised with intention to harm or excessive and unreasonable, a fair balance exercise between two values which may come into conflict must be carried out under the proportionality test: if there is a public or private interest to justify the attain to the moral right of another person. In these cases, harmful events can occur even without author guilt. The application of national provisions which protects specific moral rights should not be used solely to determine whether or not there is a violation of the rights of personality, to determine whether or not the conditions of general tort law are fulfilled. The new national provisions can be useful to determine the proportionality of the sanction, and even for establishing non-material remedies when the specific conditions of general tort law are not fulfilled. There is a relationship of complementarity, maybe even subsidiarity between general tort law and the specific remedies of civil moral rights stipulated in the Civil Code. Conceptualizing moral rights regime by enactment of statutory moral rights as „civil subjective rights” with specific remedies aims to achieve a better moral rights protection. Essentially general tort law does not deny specific protection concided by personality moral rights.
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The present study starts from the question whether a reform of the judicial system is necessary in Romania, considering also the fact that the current regulation was adopted in 2004, a part of it having its source in the Law No 92/1992 for the judicial organization. The author considers that the change of the new procedural legislation has led to some normative inconsistencies and to an overcrowding of the courts, especially of the supreme court. The situation became critical and the supreme court was forced to promote an interpretation likely to abandon the original conception of the new Code, namely that according to which it is a common law court in matters of review. The Law No 310/2018 amending the Law No 134/2010 on the Civil Procedure Code, as well as for the amendment of other normative acts has enshrined this new approach of the supreme court, which provoked vehement criticism from some authors.
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In the present article, the author analyzes twenty-four judgments of the European Court of Human Rights pronounced in the cases regarding the Revolution of 1989, by which it was established that Romania violated, mainly, the procedural side of Article 2 (right to life) of the (European) Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. The author also identifies the advantages and disadvantages of the procedure by which the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe supervises the enforcement by Romania of those judgments. Finally, the article aims to assess the impact that the judgements of the European Court of Human Rights have had in recent years on the conduct of internal investigations, i.e. the so-called „File of the Revolution”.
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The study addresses issues specific to the object of probation in appeal and emphasizes that, naturally, the object of the probation in appeal specializes as a result of the concrete manner in which there will operate the devolution determined by the holder of the legal remedy and the reasons on which it is based. At the same time, it is shown that formulating an request for evidence with a clear and concrete indication of the evidentiary thesis covered by each requested evidence is very important because only in this way it can be really made an assessment on the usefulness and on the relevance of that evidence. The author also emphasizes another reason why the indication of the evidentiary thesis is important, meaning that in its absence or in the case of indicating some generic theses the assessment on the legality of the evidence can be impeded and it is analyzed the situation of being requested to be heard as witnesses persons that are under the incidence of some legal norms that require them to maintain professional secrecy, such as magistrates or lawyers. All these arguments lead to the conclusion that a request for evidence made in appeal that hasn’t got concrete evidentiary theses indicated regarding each piece of evidence requested does not allow the assessment on the usefulness of the evidence by reference to the specialization of the object of probation at this phase of the criminal trial and, consequently, it should be dismissed by the court invested with the examination of the case.
