Abstract: This article aims to achieve a general and brief comparative approach towards the legal nature presented by the cases of removal of criminal liability and the cases who preclude punishment (impunity cases), in Romanian criminal law. The author begins from the observation that, although the dominant view in the field of criminal law is that this branch of law is based on three fundamental institutions (namely: the offence, the criminal liability, the criminal sanctions) - each of them having a set of specific extinction causes - the causes who preclude punishment (impunity cases) are not yet recognized, in principle (according to a general theory, marking the doctrine's consensus), as legally autonomous cases (cases who's exclusionary effect is produced directly upon the fundamental institution of criminal sanction). On the contrary, it is considered often that they are a specific (special) form of manifestation of the cases who remove criminal liability. As such, we appreciate that they are wrongly attributed a wider legal nature (with wider effects) than that they actually have / that they should manifest, in a logical and formal structure (hierarchy) of the three fundamental institutions that we indicated before.

Key words: legal nature; causes of removal of criminal liability; causes who preclude punishment (impunity cases); autonomy / subordination; fundamental institutions of criminal law; causes with extinction effect upon the fundamental institutions of criminal law.