OFFENSE - THE ONLY GROUND FOR CRIMINAL LIABILITY

Abstract

This study aims to examine the offence as the only ground for criminal liability. Article 15, paragraph 2 of the Criminal code provides that: “offences are the only grounds for criminal liability”, which implies the existence of an act, which is detected by the bodies empowered under the law in the form required by law, and also this principle comes as a guarantee of the person’s freedom because, without committing an act provided for by the law as an offense, the criminal liability cannot exist.

The criminal liability is one of the fundamental institutions of the criminal law, together with the institution of the offence and of the sanction, set in the various provisions of the Criminal code.

As shown in the Criminal code, in Title II regarding the offence, there is a close interdependence among the three fundamental institutions. The offence, as a dangerous act prohibited by the criminal rule, attracts, by committing it, the criminal liability, and the criminal liability without a sanction would lack the object. It obliges the person who committed an offence to be held accountable for it in front of the judicial bodies, to bide the sanctions provided for by the law, and to execute the sanction that was applied.

The correlation is also vice-versa, meaning that the sanction, its implementation, cannot be justified only by the existence of the perpetrator’s criminal liability, and the criminal liability may not be based only on committing an offence.

The criminal liability is a form of the judicial liability and it represents the consequence of non-complying with the provision of the criminal rule. Indeed, the achievement of the rule of law, in general, and also the rule of the criminal law implies, from all the law’s recipients, a conduct according to the provisions of the law, for the normal evolution of the social relations.