Superior Court of Magistracy evolves normally

The president elected by the Superior Council of Magistracy, Nicolae Horaţius Dumbravă declared at the ‘Actualitate în dezbatere’ broadcast from Radion România Actualităţi that for the time being, ‘we can not talk at all about vacuity regarding the operation of the aforementioned constitutional authority’.

Nicolae Horaţius Dumbravă asserted: ‘at this time we operate, we write the documents and take into account all the necessary documents for the good management of justice based on the constitutional authority and related to courts and the prosecutor’s offices.’
He added that the possible decisions on the activity of the Superior Court will be taken when the decision of the Constitutional Court is published in the Official Gazette.

The Constitutional Court of Romania decided on Tuesday that Senate’s decisions related to the validation of the members of the Superior Court of Magistracy are unconstitutional.
Authorities wait for the grounds of the decision related to finding new ways of improvement.

An alternative could be the restoration of elections in courts and prosecutor’s offices for compiling another list including the spokesmen from the Superior Council of Magistracy and the new list should be validated again by the Senate.

However, if the eleven members invalidated on Tuesday by the Constitutional Court miss, the Superior Council of Magistracy will not make up the required quorum to organize these elections.

There is a major trouble for which politicians and lawyers try to find the proper solution and so far the palpable proposals may include the restoration of voting in the Senate or the fact that duties of the Superior Council of Magistracy should be temporarily granted to other court members either the High Court of Cassation and Justice or the responsible minister itself.

Eventual consequences of the Constitutional Court’s decision

According to the Constitution, the Superior Council of Magistracy first oversees lawyers’ and prosecutors’ activity and punishes misbehaviors.

Opposition representatives claim that the obstruction the Superior Court of Magistracy faces may damage the image of justice which is already in trouble and which influences the summer monitoring report made by the European Commission.

On the other hand, the managerial functions of the Superior Council of Magistracy remain obstructed. Without a leadership to fulfill the function of officer all payments, from salaries to current bills, may be deferred.

Meanwhile, there won’t be organized any competition for promoting the magistrates that want to pass from a lower court to another such as the High Court of Justice or the Court of Appeal.

Likewise, any court’s request couldn’t be answered and this was related to the case of the High Court of Justice of Bucharest which aimed to increase the number of lawyers in order to cope with an avalanche of complaints lodged by the retired militaries.



Translated by: Cristina Anamaria Maricescu
MA Student, MTTLC, Bucharest University