The current Civil Procedure Code clarifies some doctrinal controversies and controversies of the arbitral case law and transposes on legislative level some solutions of the arbitral practice, meant to make the arbitral jurisdiction more efficient. Among these aspects of making it more efficient, the study mentions those related to the extension of the competence of arbitration and the autonomy of will of the parties in organizing and conducting the arbitral procedure, likely to increase the access to this private jurisdiction, as an alternative to the state jurisdiction. Another dimension of the current regulation is related to the ways of materializing the arbitral convention and of the presumption of arbitrariness of the disputes regarding all misunderstandings arising from the contract or from the legal relations to which the agreement refers. The current regulation is concerned with the quality of the jurisdictional act which it connects to the qualification of the members of the arbitration tribunal, to their impartiality, by extending the causes of incompatibility as compared to those of judges and by guaranteeing the right to defence, by representing or assisting the parties by a lawyer. The autonomy of will, which impregnates the arbitral procedure, is associated with the principles of the civil trial, extended by the current regulation to the arbitral procedure, in order to increase the procedural guarantees offered by this private jurisdiction. An innovative solution is related to the participation of third parties in the arbitral procedure, under the terms of maintaining the composition of the arbitral tribunal, in order to ensure the complete and global settlement of the dispute. Another novelty of the current regulation is related to the material competence of the courts of appeal in resolving the action for annulment and the solutions that can be pronounced in case of admitting the action for annulment. Last but not least, the regulation makes the distinction between the procedure of the institutionalized and ad-hoc arbitration, in the context of the autonomy of will of the parties.

In this paper, the author analyzes the functional competence of the hierarchically superior prosecutor to carry out criminal prosecution acts in criminal files investigated by the criminal investigation bodies whose supervision is exercised by the prosecutor within the prosecutor’s office. For this purpose, a first starting point is the Criminal Procedure Code, which regulates the judicial function of criminal prosecution in criminal trial, respectively the competence of the prosecutor in performing this function, but references are also made to the Internal Regulation of the prosecutor’s offices of 14 November 2019, to the case law of the Constitutional Court of Romania in the matter, but also to the principle of the hierarchical control that governs the activity within the Public Ministry, principle with constitutional rank, regulated by the provisions of Articles 131–132 of the Constitution. The conclusion reached after presenting a pertinent argumentation is that the hierarchically superior prosecutor does not have the functional competence to lead and supervise the activity of the criminal investigation bodies, which is carried out within the criminal files assigned to the subordinated prosecutors, considering his quality of chief prosecutor.

By this study we aimed to proceed to a configuration of the notion of „criminal case”, used by the legislator in Article 29 (1) i) of the Government Emergency Ordinance No 80/2013 on the judicial stamp duties, taking into account in our approach in a correlated way, on the one hand, the case law of the Constitutional Court, of the High Court of Cassation and Justice and of the other courts of law, on the other hand, the doctrinal considerations on the mentioned article, and of the institutions with which the notion necessarily interacts. The approached topic has an inter-institutional nature, because it is necessary, for its correct approach, to resort to legal institutions dealt with by the criminal procedural law (the criminal action, the solutions pronounced in a criminal file, the subjects of the criminal proceedings, etc.), but, of course, the civil procedural law (the civil action, the establishment of judicial stamp duties, the cause of the application for summons, etc.). We consider that the present article presents first of all a practical interest, because, in the activity of the courts of law, the interpretation of Article 29 (1) i) of the Government Emergency Ordinance No 80/2013 is divergent and non-unitary, due to an acute lack of terminological unity, and this deficiency can be reflected in an impairment of the quality of the act of justice and, further, in a decrease of the citizen’s trust in justice. The article is structured in two essential parts, the first with a general character that includes the sections „Introductory Considerations”, „Arising the questioning” and „Interpretation Tools”, and the second with a special, applied character, that includes the sections „The situation in which the civil action is exercised separately before the civil court after the criminal file has been solved in the criminal investigation phase by a solution of dismissal or abandonment of the criminal prosecution”, „The situation in which the civil action is exercised separately before the civil court without having ordered a solution within the criminal file” and Conclusions”. It should be emphasized that, in order to formulate the answer to the approached subject, our thought was oriented, first of all, to those for whom the act of justice is done – the citizens –, proposing solutions that in our vision correspond to some requirements of fairness and equality before the law. Likewise the topic subject to discussion was not approached in an exhaustive way, being only the starting point in the debates on this topic that are taking place and, of course, that will further take place. We have tried to prove that there is a „criminal case”, within the meaning of the mentioned text, only when the basis of legal actions, be they civil or criminal, is a deed provided by the criminal law (essence condition) for which the initiation of the criminal action was ordered (condition of nature). Finally, we consider that the variant of the proposed interpretation will also have the effect of discouraging processual or abusive conduct, reflected in the purely formal notification of the criminal prosecution bodies only in order to benefit from an exemption from the payment of the judicial stamp duties before civil courts, which thus diverts the analyzed legal provision from the purpose considered by the legislator at the time of its enactment.

In the system of the Civil Code of 1864, the emancipated minor acquired a limited capacity, and emancipation was a period of transition between the complete incapacity and the full freedom. The system of 1954 maintains „tacit emancipation”, but removes the term that reminded of the past, and gives only to the woman the possibility to marry before the age of 18. In addition, through „restricted” exercise capacity, the minors aged 14–18, regardless of gender, acquire an „intermediate” capacity. In search of a balance between tradition and modernity, the current system maintains „tacit emancipation”, preserves the „antechamber” of full capacity and restores „express emancipation”. There are regulated two hypotheses in which a natural person can acquire full capacity of exercise before reaching the age of 18: the conclusion of a valid marriage and the judicial recognition. In both cases, the minimum age required is 16 years and specific „justified reasons” must be proved.

In the presence of an arbitration agreement, the parties remove the general competence of the common law court for any possible disputes that may arise between them. In this article, the author starts from a case settled in the judicial practice. In the present case, although the arbitration agreement was inserted in the contract of the parties, the applicant nevertheless referred the matter to the court of law. In this situation, before the Cluj-Napoca Court of first instance, the defendant wrongly invoked the plea of territorial lack of competence. The court referred with the matter perpetuated the error and admitted the plea, although it should have qualified it as being the plea of general lack of competence of the court of law. The Cluj-Napoca Court of first instance declined the settlement of the case to Oradea Court of first instance, which took the correct measure and declined the settlement of the case to the Arbitration Court attached to the Timiș Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture. In our opinion, since the parties have established by their will the competence of the arbitral court for any possible disputes between them, they should respect this aspect and should not refer the matter to the courts of law.

Recently, Brașov Court of Appeal ruled that that the legislator listed in Article 5 (3) of the Law No 55/2020 the measures to reduce the impact of the type of risk and that the Government decisions issued in execution of the law impose certain limitations on the activit y of economic operators, the observance of which requires the presentation by individuals of a certificate proving vaccination, infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus or a negative test. Also, the Court considered that the provisions contained in the Government decisions do not add additional conditions and do not contain additional restrictions or limitations of fundamental rights, these restrictions being regulated in the Law No 55/2020 as a formal act of the Parliament. However, as we will show in our analysis, the provisions of the Law on some measures to prevent and combat the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are unconstitutional insofar as they are interpreted as allowing the restriction of the right to privacy by the processing of personal health data by economic operators, data contained in the EU Digital COVID Certificate. The unconstitutionality of the law derives from the violation of the provisions of Article 1 (5) of the Romanian Constitution in its aspect regarding the quality of the law, from the violation of the provisions of Article 53 (1) in its aspect regarding the restriction only by law of the exercise of some fundamental rights and freedoms and from the violation of the provisions of Article 26 on its side regarding the guarantees associated with the right to intimate, family and private life. The domestic use of the EU Digital COVID Certificate is also unconstitutional in relation to the provisions of Article 115 (6) of the Romanian Constitution on its side regarding the field of regulation of emergency ordinances. Thus, the main conclusion is that the judgment of Brașov Court of Appeal was given with the incorrect application of the rules of substantive law, so that a constitutional control is required in order to ensure for the recipients of the Law No 55/2020 the reasonable possibility to be able to predict the scope and effects of this normative act.

How firm the authority of the state should be and how wide the margin of freedom of the citizens of a state should be are questions without a convenient answer for either the state, or for the citizen. This is a truth that can be insisted upon for a long time, but without satisfactory results. The citizen has always demanded from the public power a sphere of his freedom as wide as possible and the public power has been and is, in principle, ready to retain an extra authority over the citizen. The author aims in this study to show that both the authority of the state and the vocation of freedom of the citizen must slide between reasonable and legitimate limits, so that the state can exercise its role and social functions established through constitutional norm and put in the service of the common good of the society and that the citizen can enjoy, without any illegitimate restraints or restrictions, a freedom (recognized and guaranteed by the state), which allows him to develop his personality and dignity as a human being, in the general interpersonal relations and in its relations with the state, in a determined social-historical, economic, political, cultural, religious context, etc. The author also shows that the relationship between authority and freedom is in its essence a fragile one, in which the state may have, in certain political circumstances or of other nature, leviathan temptations, with oppressive effects on the constitutional freedoms, a position from which it reproduces tools of force in ever new forms and it restricts the exercise of the citizens’ rights. The author draws attention to a serious social danger that threatens the foundations of a democratic government: the excess of authority and its repeated, illegitimate and unjustified use can be premises of the establishment of an authoritarian regime, in front of which the citizen is powerless. The excess of authority and the unlawful violation of public liberties call into question the democratic character of the state. In its turn and also in certain given political or social circumstances, the associated citizen or citizens may be tempted to resort to extreme forms of manifestation, claiming a higher degree of individual or collective freedom, to the detriment of the original authority of public power.

The preventive measures are institutions of criminal law of a coercive nature, by which the suspect or defendant is prevented from engaging in certain activities that would adversely affect the conduct of the criminal proceedings or the achievement of the purpose of the crimin al proceedings. The preventive measures provided in the Code of Criminal Procedure in our country are: detention, judicial control, judicial control on bail, house arrest and pre-trial detention. Of these, pre-trial detention is the measure that generates the most important problems in judicial practice. In this study, we do not intend to make an exhaustive analysis of this preventive measure or to present in detail the conditions for its disposal.