European Integration - Realities and Perspectives. Proceedings 2015
742
Civil Servants Liability
Iulian Georgel Savenco1
Abstract: Today it is inconceivable life under normal conditions without a set of rules that members of
society have the obligation to respect. Violation of any rules leads to call to account (political, legal) a person
who is guilty of breaking the rules. If civil servant in Romania, as well as for a normal citizen, vi olation of
legal provisions leads to legal liability, because civil servants, even if th ey have a special status, are obliged to
respect them. In this paper we present forms of liability that is committed by civil servants, their particularities
and the way to avoid hiring such liabilities namely professional activity in an efficient way, exacting and
specific to an administration from a democratic society characterized by the rule of law.
Keywords: legal liability; civil service; civil servant; ethics; deontology
1 Introduction
From the beginning, it is necessary to make the distinction between the concepts of responsibility and
accountability in the field of legal sciences. Doctrine (Dabu, 2000, p. 39) defines legal responsibility
as “a legal institution which the legislator expresses vocation of persons legally liable for incidental
facts and legal acts committed directly or indirectly by other people or by things that are in their
administration”. The same author states that unlike responsibility (which he sees as a liability in the
abstract, a capacity, a vocation liability) legal liability is “actual responsibility” which the competent
authority (court or administrative authority) shall determine after procedures, and finishes with a
specific penalty that may be with or without cancellation of the illegal act, return to the previous
situation, establishing damages to compensate for damage, respect of the procedure provided by law in
relation to taking safety measures (Dabu, 2000, p. 39).
According to specialized literature (Iorgovan, 2005, p.636) this distinction between the two concepts is
highlighted in terms of administrative law in several respects. Professor Antonie Iorgovan stated that:
“First, administrative law examines responsibility and liability of state administration, secondly,
administrative law examines this phenomenon in relation to civil servants and, third, administrative
law is concerned by the research of responsibility of citizens to legal norms and to their responsibility
for their violation”.
1 Senior Lecturer, PhD, Faculty of Law, “Danubius” University of Galati, Address: 3 Galati Boulevard, 800654 Galati,
Romania, Tel.: +40.372.361.102, fax: +40.372.361.290, Corresponding author: iuliansavenco@univ-danubius.ro. Translation
Otilia Bejenaru.