S-a pierdut oare umanul din judecător? O reflecție asupra evoluției jurisprudenței constituționale privind convingerea judecătorului și rostul justiției
Has the judge lost their humanity? A reflection on the evolution of constitutional jurisprudence regarding the judge's conviction and the purpose of justice

Summary/Abstract: This paper examines the evolution of the jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court of Romania regarding the concept of the judge’s conviction, focusing on three pivotal decisions: Decision No. 171/2001, which established a formalist-legalist approach separating moral conscience from judicial decision-making; Decision No. 778/2015, which reopened the space for moral rationality by distinguishing between the judge’s personal moral conscience and the juridical conscience formed at the conclusion of the trial; and Decision No. 47/2016, which reshaped the structure of judicial conviction by constitutionally endorsing the standard of reasonable doubt—introduced earlier by the New Code of Criminal Procedure in 2014—as a mechanism for objectifying certainty in criminal adjudication, while simultaneously controlling the subjectivity of deliberation. The study shows that the transition from the formalism of 2001 to the methodological prudence of 2016 is not a linear evolution, but a sequence of doctrinal corrections reflecting the persistent tension between legality and humanity. The paper argues that justice cannot be reduced to the syllogistic application of rules, as judicial decision-making inherently involves a form of moral reasoning that cannot be eliminated without compromising the very meaning of adjudication. A comparative analysis drawing on the European tradition of equity, hermeneutical philosophy, and contemporary scholarship on the role of the judge demonstrates that conviction is not an expression of subjectivism, but a deliberative operation in which reason, experience, and responsibility toward the human person converge. The study concludes that the “human element of the judge” has not disappeared, but has been progressively redefined: restricted in 2001, recontextualized in 2015, and epistemically disciplined in 2016. Nevertheless, restoring a stable balance between law and conscience requires concrete institutional measures—particularly in judicial training, the culture of reasoning, and the practice of constitutional review—so that justice may remain an act of meaning, not merely a formal mechanism.

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