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Romania Judicial System
The Ministry of Justice was responsible for the
administration
of justice and the maintenance of law and order. Under the
Constitution, it was charged with defending the socialist
order,
protecting individual rights, and reeducating those who
violate the
country's laws, in that order of precedence. The Ministry
of
Justice exercised its authority through its main
component, the
Office of the Prosecutor General (Procuratura), which was
established in 1952. The Procuratura operated the court
system,
decided jurisdictional questions, and compiled statistics
on crime.
It also oversaw the central criminology institute and
forensic
science laboratory.
Although the judicial system was theoretically
independent, the
PCR controlled it through its power to appoint judges and
through
the rules of party discipline. The judicial system took
its orders
directly from the Ministry of Interior and the security
service. As
a result, the government has never failed to win a
conviction,
according to Romanian dissidents. The GNA possessed formal
authority to appoint the prosecutor general (attorney
general) for
a five-year term, and he was theoretically responsible
only to it,
or to the Council of State when the former was not in
session. The
prosecutor general represented the interests of the party
and
government in all legal disputes. He could petition the
Supreme
Court for interpretations of existing laws or propose
changes in
criminal statutes or new legislation to the GNA. He also
appointed
lower-level prosecutors in the judete. The
Procuratura was
supposed to investigate and resolve any charges that the
Ministry
of Interior or the security service had acted illegally or
improperly. Yet the latter operated virtually unchecked in
the late
1980s, following only directives issued by Ceausescu and
the PCR.
Below the national level, the Procuratura was organized in
the
forty judete, the municipality of Bucharest, and
smaller
localities. Its prosecutors had greater latitude to issue
arrest
warrants, review evidence, monitor investigations, arraign
suspects, and file suits than did prosecutors in most
legal
systems.
Data as of July 1989
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