The Minister of Justice, reaction to the accusations of plagiarism in the doctoral thesis: “Why me?” / “We complied with the standards in accordance with the legislation at that time”

Radu Marinescu, reacted to the PressOne investigation published by journalist Emilia Șercan in which he is accused of having massively plagiarized his doctoral thesis, the Minister of Justice stating that “the truth cannot be synonymous with simple media allegations, even bizarre” and insisting that his thesis was “in accordance with the legislation at that time”.

His public position came after Emilia Șercan wrote in PressOne that more than half of the doctoral thesis in Law of the Minister of Justice, Radu Marinescu, is plagiarized.

In a post on his Facebook page, entitled “Why now? Why me?”, Radu Marinescu states that the article is “defamatory and full of contradictions, which obsessively resumes the slanders that were previously thrown at my back”.

He charges that the article “repeatedly insists on the procedure for the selection of prosecutors, launched by the Ministry of Justice just a few days ago (about why me and why now), without even using a software-based analysis.”

“Mrs. journalist Sercan Emilia accused me of plagiarism in my doctoral thesis, which I did not do!”, writes the minister, adding that he graduated from the Faculty of Law of the State University of Craiova as head of promotion and practiced as a lawyer for 30 years.

“Standards under then-current law”

What Radu Marinescu said about the accusations of plagiarism:

“Approximately 17 years ago, I developed, within the same prestigious state law faculty, the doctoral thesis, under the coordination of the late academician university professor doctor Ion Dogaru. I respected the guidelines and standards of ethics and scientific quality, in accordance with the legislation of that time, the thesis being evaluated by the supervising professor, the doctoral committee and the CNATDCU, according to all the rigors, without any non-compliance being reported to me.​​ (…)

With regard to the claims of the journalist Ms. Șercan, about the doubts concerning the standards of ethics, scientific quality of the work, as well as legality, it is necessary to specify that the respective standards were established and validated by the Doctoral Commission and CNATDCU, according to the law then in force.

To the extent that someone disputes them, even after almost 20 years, he has the full possibility to address the legal bodies, according to the law, the truth cannot be synonymous with simple media allegations, even bizarre (it would be plagiarism, but in the footnote it appears that the works of the authors from which they were inspired and which the authors who are claimed to have been taken over are quoted, some texts are in fact legally reworded, therefore not copy-pasted as the accusation sounded, but there could be the faces of a conspiracy with accomplices, intermediaries or even an unidentified plagiarized work, as if I had plagiarized the history of the evidence, which is actually only one, or other matters of this kind, of legal conceptual unanimity, as if we had presented older cases in the conditions in which we are dealing with old codes, etc.).

I recall in this context that, according to decision no. 364, of June 8, 2022, of the Constitutional Court (mandatory), these standards cannot be re-examined with legal relevance, in the context of the temporal succession of laws, in terms of the scientific value of the work, there being no constitutional or legal basis in this sense.”