Offense - The only ground for criminal liability

• Author: Laura-Roxana Popoviciu
• Position: Law and Economics Faculty, Social Sciences Department, Agora University of Oradea, Oradea, Romania
• Pages: 149-156

AGORA International Journal of Juridical Sciences, www .juridicaljournal.univagora.ro

ISSN 1843-570X, E-ISSN 2067-7677

No. 4 (2014), pp. 149-156

149

OFFENSE - THE ONLY GROUND FOR CRIMINAL LIABILITY

L. R. Popoviciu

Laura-Roxana Popoviciu

Law and Economics Faculty, Social Sciences Department

Agora University of Oradea, Oradea, Romania

*Correspondence: Laura-Roxana Popoviciu, Agora University of Oradea,

8 Piaa Tineretului St., Oradea, Romania

E-mail: lpopoviciu@yahoo.com

Abstract

This study aims to examine the offence as the only ground for c riminal liability. Article

15, paragraph 2 of the Criminal code provides that: “offences are the only grounds for

criminal liability”, which implies the existence of an act, which is detected by the bodies

empowered under the law in the form required by law, and also this principle comes as a

guarantee of the person’s freedom becaus e, without committing an act provided for by the law

as an offense, the criminal liability cannot exist.

The criminal liability is one of the fundamental institutions of the criminal law,

together with the institution of the offence and of the sanction, set in the various provisions of

the Criminal code.

As shown in the Criminal code, in Title II regarding the offence, there is a close

interdependence among the three fundamental institutions. The offence, as a dangerous act

prohibited by the criminal rule, attracts, by committing it, the criminal liability, and the

criminal liability without a sanction would lack the object. It obliges the person who

committed an offence to be held accountable for it in front of the judicial bodies, to bide the

sanctions provided for by the law, and to execute the sanction that was applied.

The correlation is also vice-versa, meaning that the sanction, its imple mentation,

cannot be justified only by the existence of the perpetrator’s criminal liability, and the

criminal liability may not be based only on committing an offence.

The criminal liability is a for m of the judicial liability and it represents the

consequence of non-complying with the provision of the c riminal rule. Indeed, the

achievement of the rule of law, in general, and also the rule of the cr iminal law implies, from

all the law’s recipients, a conduct according to the provis ions of the law, for the normal

evolution of the social relations.

Keywords: criminal liability, offence, criminal law sanction, rule of law

Introduction

The achievement of the rule of criminal law takes place by complience by the majority

of the criminal law’s recipients with its provisions, in the conformation relations. For those

who don’t comply with their conducts with the dispositions of the criminal rule committing

forbidden acts, the recuperation of the broken rule of law and the achievement of the rule of

law can take place through the coercion in a criminal judicial relation of conflict.

The criminal liability appears, in other words, as the judicial relation of conflict, of

coercion, a complex judicial relation with rights and obligations specific for the participant

subjects

1

.

On the same line, the criminal liability is defined, in the pre sent criminal doctrine, as

“the judicial criminal relation of c oercion, that appears as a consequence after c ommitting an

offence between the state, on one hand, and the perpetrator, on the other hand, a complex

1

I. Oancea, Criminal law. General part, (Drept penal. Partea general ), Bucharest, Didactic and Pedagogic

Publishing House, 1971, p. 419.