Particularitățile Deciziei Curții Constituționale nr. 669 din 3 decembrie 2024: arhitectură, transfigurare, marjă și limitele efectelor creatoare
Key features of the Constitutional Court’s Decision No. 669/2024: architecture, transfiguration, margin, and the limits of its law-making effects

Summary/Abstract: In Decision No. 669 dated 3 December 2024, the Constitutional Court set the compass of proportionality: when the writ of execution is enforced against the beneficiary, in the absence of his or her will, the protection of property and the fair distribution of tax burdens are broken. The fiscal purpose remains legitimate, the measure is abstractly appropriate, but it becomes unnecessary and excessive when the beneficiary decides in limine litis that the „judicial service” should no longer be provided: a disproportion is produced between the interest of the state and the guarantees of the litigant. Why did the Court not limit itself to issuing a pure and simple decision and instead issued an interpretative one complicating thing? And what if Decision No. 669 dated 3 December 2024 is not just an interpretative decision, but the gateway to a newer category of decisions – those that transfigure, placing conditions, rearranging procedural steps, and reordering the chronology of the legal effects of the criticized norm? How creative can the Constitutional Court be? How much can a traditional rule be transformed based on a catalyst principle without crossing the line between interpretation and legislation?Is this a solution that achieves perfection? Is what the Constitutional Court is doing right – and does it have jurisdiction to proceed in this way? Does the Constitution confer on the Constitutional Court the power to fill a legislative gap by introducing into the legal order of a rule-of-law state, through its decision, its own interpretation of an existing norm – thereby transforming that norm? Do we not risk sliding into the legislature’s sphere of competence, with the Court assuming the role of a positive legislator? And what then of foreseeability and legal certainty: without firm benchmarks (procedural formalities, strict deadlines), do we not open the door to non-uniform practice? Not all the answers are obvious; perhaps that is precisely why the decision mentioned can be highlighted and deserves to be read as the “Porumboiu Decision,” after the name of the person who raised the plea of unconstitutionality resolved by the Constitutional Court: a test of how “elastic,” in legal practice, the interpretation, reinterpretation, and transformation of an express legal norm can be—how much the legislator must do and how much the court is willing to calibrate.

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