Author(s): Mirela Steluta Croitoru / Language(s): Romanian
Issue: 06/2011
Concomitant vocation of several successive legal norms to regulate a particular
legal circumstance is designated as conflict of laws over time, while regulations in
their entirety, establishing the relationships between successive laws in time are
known as transitional law (intertemporal law). Therefore, assuming the case of a
conflict of laws over time, it deems necessary that the laws are sequential (i.e. to
be promulgated, in time, on different dates) and cover a given legal situation that
gives rise, alters or extinguishes certain rights and obligations (specific to a legal
institution) on behalf of an individual.
For a real conflict to arise between two legal rules, two cumulative conditions
should be fulfilled:
1. to be the case for a legal deed, fact or circumstance, which was incurred
under the old regulations and continues to be effective also after the enactment
of the new law;
2. the two successive regulations regulate the legal deed, fact or circumstance
in a different manner.
After verifying that the two cumulative conditions set out above are fulfilled
and establishing that there is the case of a real conflict between two (or more)
normative acts regulating the same legal circumstance in a different manner, the
Court is to rule upon the applicable legal rule, specifically, in terms of the de facto
and de jure case referred to the Court.
In achieving this aim, the Court shall apply the principle according to which:
where there are no transitional provisions, expressly regulated by the legislator
with the view to settle the conflict of laws over time for the particular case referred
to the Court, the same shall rule upon the relevant applicable law by appealing to
the general principles of law governing law enforcement over time; and where
the legislature regulated certain transitional rules for the relevant case referred to
the Court, it shall apply the same. By the Civil Code adopted under Law no. 287/2009, republished, the
legislature directly involved in the settlement of conflicts of law over time,
regulating by the instrumentality of general rules the principles of civil law
enforcement over time. Thus, by the provisions of Article 6 of Chapter II („Civil
Law Enforcement”) of the preliminary Title, the legislature adopted some rough
principles in the field of transitional law, provisions acting as „general rules”, in
that the same shall apply whenever there are no special provisions regulating the
issue of conflict of laws over time.
Thus, it was expressly enshrined the non-retroactivity rule of the civil law
provided for in Article 15 paragraph 2 of the Constitution (Article 6 paragraph 1),
there was settled the rule according to which a legal act or fact cannot generate but
the legal effects provided for by the law in force at the date of conclusion of the
deed, or, where appropriate, the accomplishment or occurrence of the legal fact
(Article 6 paragraph 2); it was ruled upon the law app
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