ERROR IN CRIMINAL LAW
ERROR IN CRIMINAL LAW

Summary/Abstract: The Romanian legislator defines in art.51 paragraph 4 of the Penal Code the principle according to which “the ignorance or wrong knowledge of the criminal law does not excuse the criminal nature of the offense”. The reasoning of the legislator when setting up this rule was based on the fact that the penal rules establish conduct rules that have the role to ensure the observance and preservation of important social values whose trespassing would attract the application of a sanction stipulated by the criminal law. Insisting upon the idea according to which people must be aware of the criminal rules in order to establish a social order necessary for a normal living in the society, the Romanian legislator institutionalized an absolute presumption of knowledge of the criminal law by its addressees. While in the past the laws were limited in number and could be known by the citizens, nowadays the extent of the criminal rules, the continuous change of the laws, the wide area of the social relations set up by law make it impossible for this principle to be applied. If the incriminations of serious offenses such as murder, robbery, bodily injury, etc., are no special cases, there are incriminations in the criminal laws to which the perpetrator may have some reduced or no access at all. In the Romanian doctrine, the error in criminal law has been the subject of interesting debates. The new Penal Code included the error in criminal law among the causes of the lack of criminal guilt of the undersigned, stating that1 “The act stipulated by criminal law committed as a result of ignorance or wrong knowledge of its illicit character due to a certain circumstance which could not have been avoided is not ascribable”. This solution is accepted by the majority of modern legislations. The analysis of the institution of error in criminal law in different legislations provides interesting results, taking into account that several solutions are suggested in this case.

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