Acts affecting the prestige of justice, perpetrated outside the exercise of professional duties

MAGISTRAT. DREPTUL LA LIBERĂ EXPRIMARE

Abstract

The manner in which the judge understood to express his personal views, likely to tear the fair balance between the fundamental right of the individual to the freedom of expression and the legitimate interest of a democratic state in watching that the public office be compliant with the purposes indicated in Article 10 para. 2 of the Convention, in the article published in the virtual space, on a site accessible to the public, referring to the content of a decision of the Constitutional Court, exceeded the limits of the prudent and calculated way in which magistrates could express their views, by using certain phrases and linguistic expressions for the unambiguous purpose of suggesting the idea that the judges of the Constitutional Court represent an instrument of certain group interests, that they do not comply with the law and that they are subordinated to certain political interests likely to induce, without any proofs, a perception of some conspiracy against the rule of law. The immediate effect of this act shall consist in affecting the prestige of justice and of the observance of public opinion in relation to the office of magistrate, with the consequence of affecting not only the public image of the magistrate in question, but also the whole justice, as a system and service in defending the order of law, under the conditions in which the indicated article had actual and direct consequences, being taken over by the media and generating some public opinion reactions. Thus, the judge’s behaviour, not to completely observe the obligation of discretion, by his public manifestations, in terms of the objective side, meets the constitutive elements of the disciplinary offence provided for under Article 99 letter a) of Law no. 303/2004.