Social Purpose and Administrative Contentious Matter in Romania

ABSTRACT: The present work has been elaborated in view of pointing out the fact that – as the social practice has demonstrated – the procedure of administrative contentious matters is understood in Romania as a real instrument able to protect the legal rights and the legitimate interests of the subjects of law (individual and moral persons). As a formal element of the social purpose this procedure has become a modality through which justice does come to be materialized. In order to sustain this conclusion we have made use of the statistical data concerning the administrative causes which have been stated upon by the sections of contentious administrative matters which do pertain to a few appeal courts from Romania as well as by the Section of Contentious Administrative and Fiscal Matters from the High Court of Cassation and Justice of Romania. The respective decisions have been issued from 2001 till 2017. We have studied the concepts of social purpose and respectively of contentious administrative matter understood as being naturally correlated. In order to justify the attitude held by the subjects of law towards this procedure we have elaborated a presentation of its assets and of its successive steps. We have as well included to the present work a few elements of comparative law which do concern the courts which are competent to solve the litigations upon contentious administrative matters. We have also analyzed the contribution brought by the Justice Court of the European Union to the solving of administrative contentious matters through the mechanism of the taken “preliminary decision”. KEYWORDS: administrative contentious matter, social purpose, juridical order, justice, legal right, legitimate interes