The Compulsoriness of the Decisions Pronounced by the Constitutional Court in the Laws Constitutionality Control

• Author: Daniela Iancu
• Position: Penal Court of Caras-Severin
• Pages: 77-80

The compulsoriness of the Decisions

pronounced by the Constitutional Court in the laws

Constitutionality Control

1Daniela IANCU

1Penal Court of Caraş-Severin

Abstract. The existence of the law state implies the respect of the law and of the Constitution supremacy. In

order to assure the Constitution supremacy, it is not enough only to proclaim this, at a declarative level, as a

principle of the constitutional order, but, more then that, it is necessary to constitute a guarantees system,

which has to allow the fundamental law to manifest itself as a l aw with superior juri dical force. One of this

guarantees is represented by the foundation of the Romanian Constit utional Court, after the 1991 Constitution

was adopted.Going f urther with the guarantees system, the Romanian 1991 Constitution gave the Romanian

Constitutional Court the mission to exercise the constitutionality control of the laws, Parliaments regulations

and ordinances adopted by the Government based on the legislative delegation.

1 Introduction

Through the 1991 Constitution, the Constitutional Court was invested with abstract control attributions

( a priori), referred to the laws before their promulgation, as well as with concrete control attributions (

a posteriori), through the unconstitutionality exception, referred to the laws and ordinances in force.

The juridical instrument through which the Constitutional Court has realized and is steel realizes its

attributions referred to the constitutionally control of the laws, is represented by decisions.1

An important problem which made the object of passionate debates in the doctrine, mostly before the

reviewing of the 1991 Constitution, is represented by the compulsoriness of the Constitutional Court

decisions.

Speaking about the effects of the Constitutional Court decisions, the 1991 Constitution, in article 145 ,

made a distinction between t he decisions pronounced by the Court in the a priori laws control and the

decisions pronounced by the Court in the a posteriori laws control.

Thus, referring to the a priori laws control, the 1991 Constitution provided that ,in case of a legal

disposition declared by the Court unconstitutional, the law was sent to the Parliament for

reexamination, and the unconstitutionality objection might have been ignored, if the law had been

adopted in the same form, with a qualifying majority of the members of each Chamber. The

promulgation of the law became therefore obligatory, although the decision of the Constitutional Court

had established that the law contained dispositions which did not comply with the Constitution.

This settlement referred to the effect of the decisions pronounced by the Constitutional Court in the a

priori laws control was virulently criticized in the doctrine. The content of this settlement h ad the

1 145 article of Romanian Constitution before the re viewing, 147 al.4 article of Romanian Constituti on in force

now.

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