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The features that give a distinct note to European Union law, and even its specificity, in relation to national or international legal orders, whether universal or regional, par excellence lie in the immediate, direct and priority applicability of the rules that make it up. The concept of „priority” EU law in relation to the national law of the Member States is likely to complete the understanding of its specificity in relation to the situation which we encounter with reference to international law. The development and adoption of primary or secondary norms of European Union law represent true, intrinsic consequences of developments or, respectively, expectations recorded at EU level, either qualitatively or quantitatively. From such a perspective the steps we are witnessing, including those of legislative nature, must be known, understood, and accepted. Our approach considers the fundamental legal basis offered by the Romanian Constitution, republished version, but also relevant aspects found in the Civil Code, the Civil Procedure Code, Penal Code, and Criminal Procedure Code, to which we add the Insolvency Law. -
The courts can contribute, within their competencies, to ensure supremacy of the Constitution; this also involves the ability to directly implement some of the constitutional regulations. In the context of the complex process of human rights internationalization, certain analysis and solutions concerning the relationship between the international and domestic human rights regulations and hence interpretations of the provisions covered by the Constitution on this issue appear more frequently within the case law. In this study the author analyzes the role of national judges in applying the (European) Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms under the legitimacy which is conferred upon them by the provisions of Art. 20 of the Constitution, republished; this analysis is based on case law matters on criminal appeal, governed by Art. 141 paragraph 1 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. -
Având în vedere că reclamanții au solicitat desființarea unor acte de reconstituire a dreptului de proprietate privată pe calea acțiunii prevăzute de art. III din Legea nr. 169/1997, Curtea a constatat că, în lipsa unor norme de stabilire a instanței competente în cuprinsul acestei legi speciale, se va aplica Codul de procedură civilă. Dat fiind obiectul cererii (constatarea nulității absolute parțiale a unui titlu de proprietate emis în temeiul Legii fondului funciar nr. 18/1991), Curtea a constatat că, sub aspectul determinării instanței competente, se aplică criteriul valoric, astfel că prezentul conflict urmează a fi soluționat în raport de pragul legal de 200.000 lei, prevăzut la art. 94 pct. 1 lit. k) C.pr.civ. Determinarea instanței competente material în cazul cererilor imobiliare se face doar prin raportare la dispozițiile art. 104 C.pr.civ., nu și la prevederile art. 31 alin. (2) din Ordonanța de urgență a Guvernului nr. 80/2013, întrucât acestea din urmă nu instituie reguli speciale de competență, ci cuprind norme de stabilire a cuantumului taxei judiciare de timbru. -
The study is grounded on the thesis according to which the contestation against execution aimed at reducing the punishment imposed on the convicted person under the special cause of reducing the punishment provided in Article 19 of the Law No 682/2002 on the protection of witnesses is inadmissible. -
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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Unlike the previous Civil Procedure Code, the current (Romanian) Civil Procedure Code regulates (as an exception from the rule of uniqueness of the judicial remedies of a judgment) the admissibility, in some situations, of filing an appeal ex novo during the judgment of an appeal ex novo, respectively, of filing the appeal on law during the judgment of an appeal on law. This study examines analytically this new conception and regulation of the current Civil Procedure Code (Law No 134/2009, republished), the author positively appreciating the new regulation in question. -
The insurance market in Romania is an extremely complex field of legal regulation, which involves not only the observance of the principle of fair competition between the professional competitors, rivals on the market, but mostly the observance of some high standards of consumers’ protection, which are in a net inferiority ratio from a financial, informational and organizational point of view, in comparison with the policy issuers covering the compulsory civil insurance. From this perspective, the withdrawal of the operating authorization and the initiation of the bankruptcy procedure against the Insurance-Reinsurance Company City Insurance – S.A. raises a series of big problems for the clients of this insurer, not only from the point of view of the contractual relations established by the insurance contract, but especially through the procedural mode of action on the part of these consumers, so that the protection of their rights be full, as well as that the effects of the opening of bankruptcy procedure against City Insurance be mitigated, as much as possible, in relation to the already precarious situation of these clients. We intend, through this study, to highlight a series of pressing legal issues and to propose a series of solutions to the legal, substantive or procedural issues that arise from the withdrawal of the authorization of this important player on the insurance market from Romania. Thus, those entitled to recover the expenses occasioned by the repair of the cars involved in road accidents caused by the clients of City Insurance – S.A. have the way opened for a special and accelerated procedure for the recovery of these damages, without waiting for the opening of the bankruptcy procedure against this insurer and the registration in the amount of claims, extremely laborious and time-consuming legal procedures, which raise problems for the consumers who are victims of traffic accidents, and also for the clients of the insurance company who could see themselves engaged in legal actions intended to lead to the compensation of those injured in road accidents and that would endanger their personal patrimony, although they appear as contracting parties and beneficiaries of some perfectly valid RCA policies on the date when the damage was caused. -
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Decree No 40/1953 marked the transfer of the competence to settle the non-contentious succession procedure from the courts to the former State Notaries. This competence was also maintained by the new regulation of the activity of notaries public, the Law No 36/1995. However, neither the aforementioned Decree or the Law No 36/1995 in its original version acknowledged the possibility for interested persons to resolve amicably those disputes resulting from the issuance of the certificate of succession without complying with certain legal provisions that could lead to its annulment. Starting with 2013, the litigants benefit from a new legal way of declaring the nullity of the certificate of succession, the present study proposing its analysis and also the comparison with the other procedure already established for annulling the certificate of succession, the judicial procedure. The two procedures led to lengthy debates in practice, given the double controversy over the legal nature of the certificate of succession and the legal regime of conventional nullities, the legislator of the new Civil Code indicating only the possibility of declaring a nullity through conventional means, letting the doctrine define its effects. We have chosen as the focal point of this research treating these controversies born in the judicial and notarial practice, both encountering some difficulties, for example, in qualifying the type of nullity invoked according to the interest protected by the violated legal norm or establishing who can file an action for the annullment of the certificate of succession. These issues determined us to try to answer the questions that have risen in the judicial and notarial practice regarding the succession procedure and the annulment of the certificate of succession, trying through this research to offer them the most suitable answers, taking into account especially the spirit of the law, without neglecting its letter. Thus, we mainly analyzed who can file an action for the annulment of the certificate of succession, the issue of the extinctive prescription of this action, as well as the regime of the amicable nullity applicable when the heirs agree on declaring the nullity of the certificate of succession. -
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The present paper aims to analyze extensively the institution of commitment of the responsibility of the Government before the Parliament, trying to identify possibilities to improve the current constitutional regulation in Romania. For this purpose, in a first part of the paper, in order to better understand the resources of the institution, the comparative method is used. Thus, similar regulations from other states are widely presented, such as the vote of confidence in a number of parliamentary regimes (United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the Federal Republic of Germany, the Fourth French Republic), as well as the regulation of the commitment of the responsibility of the Government in the current French semi-presidential regime. Subsequently, the paper focuses on the regulation of the institution of commitment of the responsibility in Romania, being studied the manner of application thereof by the Government in the last 30 years. Several perspectives are used for this purpose: that of doctrine, an occasion that allows the presentation of arguments for and against the current regulation of the institution; that of constitutional practice, which allows the understanding of some disfunctionalities of the current regulation; and, finally, that of the constitutional case law developed in the last three decades, on which occasion it can be deduced a complex theory developed by the constitutional court regarding the limits of the use of the institution. At the end of the paper, a series of proposed amendments are analyzed on the occasion of various attempts to revise the Romanian Constitution and an extensive set of proposals on improving the current regulation is presented. As a consequence, the present paper provides a starting point for the future use of the institution of commitment of the responsibility of the Government, but especially for the improvement of the current constitutional regulation.
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This article explores the concept of usucapion as envisioned by the new Civil Code of Romania. In the current regulation, the usucapion retains its status as both an originary mode of acquiring property and other real rights and a particularly important effect of possession. Unlike the former regulation, usucapion is now applicable not only in real estate matters, but also to moveable goods. With this new regulation, the lawmaker also had in mind the land registry system, as established by Law No 7/1996. In this regard, the provisions applicable to Transylvania, Banat and Bucovina in respect to the distinction between the two forms of real estate usucapion, namely tabular and extra-tabular, are extended for the entire country, with some changes. Therefore, our study sets forth a novel perspective on this subject and at the same time aims to present its findings in a concise, albeit exhaustive manner. -
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The present study aims to present a series of case law decisions in which the role and the activity of the central bank has proved to be insufficiently considered in depth by the Romanian courts. The application thereby, as regards the National Bank of Romania, of some legal provisions addressed to commercial banks, confusing the administrative review on the acts of the central bank with the administrative jurisdiction, overlapping restraints of the constitutional frameworks in which the National Bank has activated throughout its history, inconsistencies with the vision accepted at European level regarding the attributions and independence of the central banks are widely treated in an attempt to clarify the specific position that the central bank holds in the Romanian institutional landscape. There were presented some solutions from the judicial practice that highlight the need for doctrinal clarifications regarding the nature of the activity of the central bank, including from the European perspective. The importance of knowing them is determined by the significant effects that the correct or incorrect application of the norms and principles regarding the central bank can produce not only at the level of the administrative law, but also at criminal or economic level.
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This study includes a critical analysis of the provisions of the new Criminal Procedure Code which provide the producing of proof by expertise in case the technical-scientific fact-finding report is contested. The author has in view the wording of the legal text, which he considers as defective, thus allowing different interpretations. The essence of the discussion is related to the mandatory nature or, on the contrary, to the optional nature of producing the proof of expertise in the mentioned hypothesis. -
On 10 December 2009, the Parliament of Romania passed the Law no. 381/ 2009 regarding the introduction of the preventive concordat and the ad-hoc mandate. This paper examines the main features of these preventive instruments, designed to be used by the debtor in order to avoid the opening of the insolvency procedure, while restructuring its undertaking and its debts, as to provide satisfaction to the creditors. The author analyzes the categories of debtors that are eligible for such procedures, the role played by the judicial bodies, the proxy and the conciliator and the mechanism of implementation and the effects of the preventive concordat and the ad-hoc mandate. The final part is critically addressing the chances of these preventive instruments to satisfy the interests of both the debtor and the creditors. -
On 10 December 2009, the Parliament of Romania passed the Law no. 381/ 2009 regarding the introduction of the preventive concordat and the ad-hoc mandate. This paper examines the main features of these preventive instruments, designed to be used by the debtor in order to avoid the opening of the insolvency procedure, while restructuring its undertaking and its debts, as to provide satisfaction to the creditors. The author analyzes the categories of debtors that are eligible for such procedures, the role played by the judicial bodies, the proxy and the conciliator and the mechanism of implementation and the effects of the preventive concordat and the ad-hoc mandate. The final part is critically addressing the chances of these preventive instruments to satisfy the interests of both the debtor and the creditors. -
The analysis of the offenses against safety on public roads refers hereinafter to four other offenses (leaving the scene of an accident or changing or erasing evidence of the accident; preventing or hindering traffic on public roads; failure to comply with the tasks regarding the technical inspection or the performance of repairs and the performance of unauthorized works in the public road area), continuing our approach to present to the reader our personal option regarding this set of offenses, presently provided for in an emergency ordinance. Key words: vehicle, car, leaving the scene of an accident, changing the scene of an accident, erasing evidence of the accident, carrying out unauthorized works on the public road, preventing traffic, hindering traffic, poor performance of the technical inspection for vehicles and cars. -
The author’s approach to bring forward offenses against public safety on the roads in terms of the new regulation of the Criminal Code enacted by Law no. 286/2009 stands not only for a scientific approach, but also for a matter of letting those concerned in on the regulation and criminal approach of offenses in this area, against provisions of Government Emergency Ordinance no. 195/2002 on road traffic, regulations characterized by profound differences. These are some, though not all which justify, but renders our approach imperative, which, as one may note, shall prove useful in both teaching and practical terms, if it were to consider, on the one hand, the different legal matter of the two regulations, and, on the other hand, some new normative ways of achieving these facts. For the reader to better and easier understand the criminal indictments’ issue, we set ourselves to consider below separately, in two parts, offenses against public safety on the roads. -
After the adoption and the entry into force of the Law on the administrative disputes No 554/2004, subsequently to the constitutional revision of 2003, the problems of the special administrative jurisdictions are of particular interest, being one of the institutions of the public law meant to ensure the celerity of the settlement of disputes, doubled by the guarantee offered to the litigants, concerning the compliance with the constitutional principle of free access to justice, the right to a fair trial and to the settlement of cases within a reasonable time. In this context, the study intends to make an analysis of the constitutionality of the special administrative jurisdictions regulated by the Law No 554/2004 and in some special normative acts, adopted after the constitutional revision from 2003, in relation to the provisions of Article 21 (4) of the Romanian Constitution revised and republished. -
This paper analyzes the principle of mutual recognition as a method of legal integration specific to EU law but also, in the form of Full Faith and Credit and Extradition Clauses, in the U.S. Constitution and law. The article presents a brief historical perspective on this principle, of its roots in Anglo-Saxon law and its direct continuity in U.S. law, but also of taking over, through legal hybridization, in combination with the harmonization method, in EU law. The work analyses: the function of legal integration of the principle, as an essential component of both American federalism and the EU legal order, its fundamental characteristics and its conditions of application and the topic of Interstate Extradition Clause versus European Arrest Warrant. The Articles of Confederation, the U.S. Constitution, federal laws, uniform laws, the case-law of the U.S. Supreme Court and other U.S. courts, altogether with the EU fundamental treaties, the legal acts of the European Union and the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of European Union were considered. Numerous similarities have emerged from the comparative analysis, but also some differences, coming from the different paradigms of American federalism and, respectively, of the EU legal order.
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Finding the truth in the criminal trial sometimes requires the hearing as witnesses of some persons who know of factual elements referring to the object of the case. In order that the statements given by these persons should not be influenced by factors of pressure exercised on them, the criminal processual legislation has also instituted some special measures to protect the persons that are going to be heard in this capacity in the criminal trial, being also created special categories, such as the category of threatened witness, of vulnerable witness and of witness included in the witness protection program. This study deals with the transitory situation arisen after the entry into force of the new Criminal Procedure Code where the witness, to whom the status of witnesses with protected identity in the criminal prosecution phase has been granted in accordance with the provisions of the previous Criminal Procedure Code, is heard in the trial phase after the entry into force of the new Code.
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The author points out that article 77 of the new Criminal Code reassessed the circumstances having the ability to emphasize a high degree of social danger of the committed offence and of the offender. Thus, the scope of the circumstance relates to the perpetration of the offence by a person being in a preordinate intoxicated condition which may be generated besides the alcohol, by other psychoactive substances, whose consumption represents a breach of a legal or medical interdiction. The aggravation of the criminal liability has been waived in case the offence is committed for infamous reasons, as the content of this circumstance has never been precisely determined by the doctrine and jurisprudence. A new aggravating circumstance has been introduced consisting in the perpetration of the offence by taking advantage of the obvious vulnerable condition of the injured person due to his/her age, health condition, disability of due to some other grounds, as such a circumstance emphasizes a high level of gravity of the offence, but also a degree of increased injuriousness of the offender. Another novelty item is represented by the waiver to the category of judicial aggravating circumstances, because the imprecise manner in which they are regulated would be situated at the edge limit of the principle of the predictable nature of law. -
Over time, the abuse of right has been interpreted in various ways: while the advocates of absolute rights have interpreted it literally, namely as the almightiness of individual rights, the advocates of relative rights claim that the rights of one person end where the rights of another person start, so that the person excessively using its own right commits an abuse of right. As regards the explanation of its punishment, the classical theory assimilates it to tort liability, based on the moral censorship of conduct. Meanwhile, more and more of its hypotheses have become detached from fault. The new Romanian Civil Code accepts these trends partially, still remaining the prisoner of fault, as a basis for civil liability. The above-mentioned study intends to examine in a critical manner the legal solutions provided by the new regulation, trying to explain the punishment of the abuse of right on other ideas than the requirement to punish the guilty conduct of the holder.
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The author is dealing with the issues related to the postponement and interruption of the execution of penalty by imprisonment and by life detention according to the new Criminal Procedure Code. The study contains a comparative analysis of the new provisions and of the provisions in force both from the point of view of the doctrine, and of the jurisprudence in the field. -
The completion of the criminal justice activity requires the immediate execution of the final criminal decisions and continuity in the enforcement activity. However, there are also exceptional situations in which the report on criminal enforcement law is suspended as a result of impediments to the execution of the punishment. Such a situation is also the postponement of the execution of the prison sentence or life imprisonment. Postponing the execution of the punishment is not a removal of the punishment imposed on the convict, but only the delay from which it is to begin, being an exception to the rule of immediate enforcement of the criminal judgment. In order to avoid situations of unjustified delay in the execution of the punishment, or even to the abolition of punishment, the legislator provided expressly and limitatively the cases and conditions in which the sentenced person may obtain the postponement of the execution of the punishment. Far from being exhaustive, the present study can represent a supporting element for certain legal or practical clarifications related to the institution of postponing the execution of imprisonment or life imprisonment. -
At the same time with the entry into force of the Law No 286/2009 on the Criminal Code, the regime of judicial individualization of criminal sanctions has undergone significant changes both by introducing some new institutions, such as postponement of application of punishment, and by a different regulation of some old institutions, such as the suspension under supervision of execution of punishment. The author analyzes comparatively the two above-mentioned institutions of law, as well as by correlation with other provisions of the criminal law, in order to highlight their defining particularities, required to be known for a better judicial individualization of punishment. -
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Marea Adunare Națională dela Alba-Iulia, din 18 Noembrie/1 Decembrie 1918, a îmbrăcat, mai presus de orice îndoială, caracterul de adunare constituantă. Alcătuită din reprezentanți ai Românilor din teritoriile aflate sub imperiul Marelui Sfat Național Român1 – representanți pe categorii profesionale și sociale pe de-o parte, pe circumscripțiuni electorale pe de alta2 ea a fost, în mod cert, icoana juridică a vrerei întregii suflări românești din Transilvania3. Grandioasele proporțiuni ale acestei adunări se reliefează ca un eveniment fără precedent în istoria noastră națională, ca un eveniment cu puțini corespondenți în cea universală. Voința națională și-a găsit o expresiune unică prin vigoarea cu care s’a manifestat – cu prilejul acestei zile memorabile.
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Article 42 (3) of the Annex to the Order of the Minister of National Defence No M.110/2009 is a true legal innovation because it extends the scope of the liability for medical malpractice to hotel obligations (specific to the tenancy contract) within the content of the medical contract, but, at the same time, reduces the sphere of liable persons down to the military physician (treating physician and section chief), by exceeding the express legal limits of the liability of the physician and actually taking over not only the entire medical liability of the military hospital, but also of the medical equipment producers and of the suppliers of utilities of the military hospital.
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The regulation (Article 226) of the new Criminal Procedure Code has a corresponding regulation in the provisions of Article 1371 paragraph 1 and Article 1491 paragraphs 9–11 of the previous Criminal Procedure Code (1968), with an exception: the duration of the remand on custody will no longer be deducted from the duration of the preventive detention. The authors analyze the institution of admission of the proposal of preventive detention of the defendant during the criminal prosecution, by presenting some critical aspects and by proposing some improvements to the new regulation. -
In principle, the confession is admissible as means of evidence in all the matters for which the civil processual law represents the common law of the procedure and for which there is no separate procedure. Exceptionally, the confession is not admissible: when it is expressly prohibited by law; whether, by admitting it, the imperative provisions of the law would be eluded; if the law requires that certain facts be proved only by certain means of evidence; if, by admitting it, one could reach to total or partial loss of a right which may not be waived or may not be subject to a transaction. The judicial confession shall be given by means of cross-examination, as reflected by Articles 351–358 of the Civil Procedure Code. Obviously, it is a question of provoked judicial confession, whereas the spontaneous judicial confession does not require any prior preparation and, as such, it does not require an express regulation. Instead, the written extrajudicial confession is subject to the regime of proof of evidence through written documents, and the extrajudicial verbal confession may be attested by witnesses, if the law allows the testimonial evidence. The legislator of the new Civil Procedure Code expressly establishes the principle of indivisibility of the judicial confession and, at the same time, he provides an exception from this principle, namely the situation in which the judicial confession contains separate facts not connected between them. In this study there are elaborated the ideas presented above -
Instanța de control judiciar a decis că sesizarea formulată de judecătorul delegat cu executarea, întemeiată pe dispozițiile art. 583–585 C.pr.pen., este admisibilă și, în consecință, se va proceda mai întâi la anularea suspendării sub supraveghere a executării pedepselor aplicate pentru fapte aflate în concurs și, în continuare, în mod logico-juridic, se va proceda la contopirea acestor pedepse (cu notă aprobativă). -
The application of ancillary intervention submitted in favour of the authority that has issued the individual administrative act is admissible in the actions in administrative disputes having as object the suspension of this type of acts, to the extent to which the third party intervening in a trial between the original parties is able to prove the practical benefit which he obtains as a consequence of pronouncing a solution favourable to the party in whose favour it intervenes. The necessity to prove that the condition of imminent damage is fulfilled by the applicant who considers himself injured, by the individual administrative act whose suspension is requested, does not confer this action a personal nature, in such a way as to be incompatible with the institution of ancillary intervention.
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Appeal for annulment – extraordinary remedy at law under the current Criminal Procedure Code and the new Code of Criminal Procedure – may be exercised against final judgments pronounced by the last instance of judicial control provided there are certain cases expressly mentioned and that it is filed in a given period. Final judgments may also concern other aspects adjacent to criminal proceedings, for example, taking, retention or reversal of preventive measures or enforcement of a European arrest warrant. In such cases, taking into account that the law of criminal procedure does not provide other terms of admissibility, under the dictum “Ubi lex non distinguit, nec nos distinguere debemus”, the author considers that the appeal for annulment extraordinary remedy at law may be exercised in such cases as well; the case law solution stating that the appeal for annulment is admissible only against final judgments resolving the case merits is therefore illegal.
