The consent of the victim expressed by legal entities as a cause of justification

Abstract

The premise of the article is the consent expressed by a legal entity, which raises many thorny issues, given the multitude of forms of organization of legal entities and the specificities incumbent thereof. The cause of justification of consent is less frequently analysed in-depth in relation to a wide range of crimes, being mainly discussed in connection with "scholar" offenses, such as those against persons or property.

Since in judicial practice this cause of justification is often invoked in case of criminal acts committed against legal entities, we considered important and relevant to analyse the legal entity’s will as the passive subject of a crime, taking into consideration that the analysis of legal entities’ conduct when the social values of which they are the owner of are endangered - complete and support the picture of the criminal liability of legal entities.

Besides the conditions regarding the validity, timeliness and determined nature of consent, which raise a number of specific issues in the case of legal entities, the range of social values available to a legal person is quite limited and often intertwines with other social values whose owner is the state, so their disposability is an extremely delicate issue, which is apt to generate discussions. Thus, this article aims, through the punctual analysis of most crimes in the Criminal Code and in other laws that were considered relevant, to study the disposability of the protected social values and to invite the outlining of guidelines for judicial practice. Moreover, as stated in the article, a consent expressed by a legal entity to commit a criminal action against it sometimes transcends the field of causes of justification and may have effects on attracting the criminal liability of that legal entity, even if such a conclusion seems, at first sight, counterintuitive.