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Judicial system of Iran | |
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قوه قضاییه جمهوری اسلامی ایران | |
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Established | 1905 |
Jurisdiction | Iran |
Location | Tehran |
Composition method | Supreme Leader selection with Judges approval |
Authorized by | Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran |
Judge term length | 5 years |
Chief Justice | |
Currently | Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje'i |
Since | 1 July 2021 |
Deputy Chief Justice | |
Currently | Mohmmad Mosaddegh kahnamouei |
Since | 13 July 2021 |
A nationwide judicial system in Iran was first implemented and established by Abdolhossein Teymourtash under Reza Shah, with further changes during the second Pahlavi era.
After the 1979 overthrow of the Pahlavi dynasty by the Islamic Revolution, the system was greatly altered. The legal code is now based on Islamic law or sharia, although many aspects of civil law have been retained, and it is integrated into a civil law legal system. According to the constitution of the Islamic Republic, the judiciary in Iran "is an independent power" with a Ministry of Justice, head of the Supreme Court, and also a separate appointed Head of the Judiciary. [1]
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Government of Islamic Republic of Iran |
According to one scholar, the administration of justice in Islamic Iran has been until recent times
a loosely sewn and frequently resewn patchwork of conflicting authority in which the different and sometimes conflicting sources for Islamic law—the jurists, the actual judges, and the non-Islamic law officials of the king - disputed with each other over the scope of their jurisdictions. ...
some aspects of the law always remained in the hands of the mullahs ... The village mullah was the natural arbiter in matters of marriage, divorce, and inheritance; and the exalted jurisconsult, in order to carry out the very function for which he was exalted, gave opinions on those matters of law on which he was consulted. In between the village mullah and the jurisconsult there were mullahs with courts which, while sometimes sanctioned by the royal government, depended for their power on the prestige of the presiding mullah judge as much or more than on the government's sanction [2]
Since the sixteenth century AD Iran has been the only country in the world having Shi'ah Islam as its official religion, consequently the general principles of its legal system differed somewhat from those of other countries which followed Islamic law.
Among the ways, law in Iran and the rest of the Muslim world differed from European law was in its lack of a single law code. "Thirteen centuries of Islamic—more particularly Shiah—tradition" called for jurists to base decisions on their legal training as it applied to the situation being judged. [3] There was also no appeal in traditional Islamic law.
One jurists's 'discovery' of the ruling of law for a specific case would not have been invalidated by some other jurist's discovery of a different ruling for that case; only God could choose between them, and until the Resurrection (or in the case of the Shiah, the return of the Twelfth Imam) God had left the matter to the jurists, and the first actual judgment was final, as otherwise there would have been an infinite regress of opinions without any final judgment. For the Shiah, ... resistance to a single written code was even stronger; the jurisconsult's right to describe the law in his own way was the very essence of the doctrine that had revived the jurisconsult school at the end of the 18th century." [3]
As far as the judicial system is concerned, the changes were quite minor until the end of the nineteenth century.
Major events marking the judicial history of Iran during the modern era include the Constitutional Revolution of 1906, which gave the country its first Constitution and Bill of Rights, the fall of the Qajars and the rise of the Pahlavi Dynasty in the 1920s, when accession to a modern judicial organisation became one of Iran's greatest challenges, and the Islamic Revolution.
As European military and technological power began to be felt in 19th century Iran, Westerners insisted on special treatment in Iranian courts. This came in the form of treaties between most European governments and Iran requiring the presence at the trial of any European in Iran of a representative of that European's home country, who would countersign the decision of the Iranian court, and without whose countersignature the "decision of the Iranian court could have no effect". The Europeans insisted on this legal veto right—" called the regime of capitulations"—on the grounds that Iran had no written legal code so that "no one knew what laws foreigners would be judged by." Iran followed the traditional Islamic practice of each judge giving his own interpretation of Islamic law for a given litigation, with no right of appeal. [3]
Iranians in general opposed these capitulations, and secular Iranians such as Mohammed Mossadeq, wanted to establish a fixed written law they believed would not only end the capitulations but facilitate the building of a strong and unified state. [4]
Under the secularist reign of Reza Shah many changes were made in Iran's judicial system, and the establishment of a fixed written law with appeals courts was one of them. In March 1926, Minister of Judicial Affairs Ali-Akbar Davar dissolved Iran's entire judiciary, with the approval of the parliament, and initiating a wave of fundamental restructuring and overhauling reforms with the aid of French judicial experts. By April 1927 Iran had 600 newly appointed judges in Tehran. Davar subsequently attempted to expand the new system into other cities of Iran through a programme involving training of 250 judges. [5]
Reza Shah represented his legal reforms as "tentative experiments" and allowed the religious judges to keep their courts for matters such as inheritance. In 1936, however, the new system was made permanent and the religious courts were abolished. [6] However, there were still sharia courts that ruled on issues of family and inheritance up to the Islamic Revolution (working alongside secular ones). Some aspects of sharia law were also unofficially retained in criminal law, for example compensation was still unofficially given in a similar manner to blood money, in exchange for pardoning a murder death sentence in some cases.
According to Banakar and Ziaee, the history of the Iranian Bar Association (Kānūn-e Vūkalā-yeh Dādgūstarī) "can be traced back to the period after the 1906 Constitutional Revolution, when a modern legal system was established in Iran. The IBA was founded in 1915 and organised under the supervision of the judicial system until 1953, when it was granted legal personality. It operated as an independent civil society organisation for the next twenty-seven years, until it was closed in 1980 by the revolutionary government and its ranks and files were purged. It was reopened in 1991 under the control of the Head of the Judiciary and regained some of its independence in 1997 when President Khatami […] won the general election. Since then, the numbers of lawyers have grown steadily to an estimated 60,000, and perhaps most significantly a large number of women have passed the Bar and joined the legal profession". "Since the 1979 Revolution, the IBA has been struggling to maintain its independence from the judiciary. As part of this conflict, a new body of lawyers was created by the Iranian government in 2001 and 'authorized to present cases in court' under Article 187 of the Law of Third Economic, Social and Cultural Development Plan (adopted in May 2000). […] This group, whose membership in 2014 was estimated to exceed 20,000, is officially known as the Legal Advisors of the Judiciary." [7]
In 1979 the secular, westernizing Pahlavi Dynasty was overthrown and replaced by an Islamic Republic under the rule of Ayatollah Khomeini. [8] While the revolution did not dismantle the Pahlavi judiciary in its entirety, it replaced secular-trained jurists "with seminary-educated ones, and codified more features of the sharia into state laws—especially the Law of Retribution." [1] Women judges were also removed [9] (although they could still be lawyers, or after 1997, secondary judges in civil cases).
Between 1979 and 1982, the entire pre-Revolutionary judiciary was purged, and their duties replaced by "Revolutionary Tribunals" set up in every town. These tribunals ruled on "Islamic law", but were in practice unfair, biased, and the judges were inexperienced and often incompetent. [10] Many people were executed or given harsh punishments for both political and criminal acts. There were no appeals either, and trials often lasted minutes in an un-orthodox "court". In 1982, the regular court system was reinstated, but with the judges now trained in Islamic law. The Revolutionary Courts became a part of this court system, ruling in matters of "national security" such as drug trafficking and political and "anti-revolutionary" crimes, and were considered the "judicial arm of the regime". In 1982, in response to military coup threats, a separate "Military Revolutionary Court" was formed, handling military cases. [10] The Retribution Law (Qisas) of 1982 replaced sections of the Public Punishment Law (1924). [11]
The 1979 Constitution of the Islamic Republic calls Iran to have a Head of the Judiciary, also known in English as 'Chief Justice of Iran', who is to be a "just Mujtahid" (high level Islamic cleric) appointed by the Supreme Leader and to serve for "a period of five years." He is responsible for the "establishment of the organizational structure" of the judicial system; "drafting judiciary bills" for Parliament; hiring, firing, promoting and assigning judges. Judges cannot be dismissed without a trial.
Iran's prison system was "centralized and drastically expanded" by the Islamic Republic. Under the Shah prisons had been administered separately by SAVAK, the urban police, and the gendarmerie. The new regime entrusted their management "to a supervisory council of three clerics". [12]
The Islamic Republic uses the Shia based Jaafari school of Islamic jurisprudence. After the election of the first Majles of the Islamic Republic in 1980, the Majles and the Guardian Council quickly codified important features of the sharia law by passing two landmark bills [13] in July 1982: [11] Sharia law includes Hudud ("claims against God", punishable by a mandatory, fixed sentence), Qisas (the law of retaliation/retribution), diyyeh, or blood money (to compensate for the death/injury), Qanon-e Ta'zir (tazir is a crime that receives a discretionary sentence by a judge), Qanon-e Qisas (Retribution Law).
The Supreme Audit Court of Iran regulates banking and financial operations and interest (riba) is forbidden.
In 1991–1994, Iran combined all of these laws into the unified "Islamic Penal Code" which consisted of five "Books". [14] The new Islamic Penal Code was adopted in January 2012 and incorporates the bulk of penal laws in the IRI, replacing Books One through Four of the old code. [15] Book Five of the Islamic Penal Code ("the only part of the Penal Code that has been adopted permanently and is not subject to experimental periods") passed on May 22, 1996. [16]
Sharia in the IRI has been modified to some degree, according to one source, the new laws of the Islamic Republic "modify the sharia" (i.e. what Muslims believe is God's legislation) "in three significant ways": allowing the appeal of decisions, the use of circumstantial evidence in cases, and long-term imprisonment as a punishment. [17]
In a 2013 poll by Pew Research Center, while 83% of Iranians favored the use of Islamic law, but only 37% of Iranians believed that Iran's legal system closely follows Islamic law. [18]
The term Islamic republic has been used in different ways. Some Muslim religious leaders have used it as the name for a theoretical form of Islamic theocratic government enforcing sharia, or laws compatible with sharia. The term has also been used for a sovereign state taking a compromise position between a purely Islamic caliphate and a secular, nationalist republic — neither an Islamic monarchy nor secular republic. In other cases, it is used merely as a symbol of cultural identity.
Special Clerical Court, or Special Court for Clerics is a special Iranian judicial system for prosecuting crimes, both ordinary and political, committed by Islamic clerics and scholars. The Special Clerical Court can defrock and disbar Islamic jurists, give sentences of imprisonment, corporal punishment, execution, etc. The court functions independently of the regular Iranian judicial framework, with its own security and prison systems, "generally secret and confidential" cases, proceedings and procedures, and is accountable only to the Supreme Leader of Iran,. The most senior Islamic politician to be prosecuted and sentenced to prison since the Iranian Revolution was Abdollah Nouri who was sentenced to five years in prison for political and religious dissent by the court in 1999.
The Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran is the supreme law of Iran. It was adopted by referendum on 2 and 3 December 1979, and went into force replacing the Constitution of 1906. It has been amended once, on 28 July 1989. The constitution was originally made up of 175 articles in 12 chapters, but amended in 1989 to 177 articles in 14 chapters.
In Islamic Law, tazir refers to punishment for offenses at the discretion of the judge (Qadi) or ruler of the state. It is one of three major types of punishments or sanctions under Sharia Islamic law — hadd, qisas and ta'zir. The punishments for the Hadd offenses are fixed by the Qur'an or Hadith, qisas allow equal retaliation in cases of intentional bodily harm, while ta'zir refers to punishments applied to the other offenses for which no punishment is specified in the Qur'an or the Hadith or is not punishable under either qisas or hudud.
Islamic Government, or Islamic Government: Jurist's Guardianship is a book by the Iranian Shi'i Muslim cleric, jurist and revolutionary, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. First published in 1970, it is perhaps the most influential document written in modern times in support of theocratic rule.
Massoud Rajavi was an Iranian politician and revolutionary who became the leader of the People's Mujahedin of Iran (MEK) in 1979. In 1985, he married Maryam Rajavi, who became the co-leader of the MEK. After leaving Iran in 1981, he resided in France and Iraq. He disappeared shortly before the 2003 invasion of Iraq and it is not known whether he is still alive. This has left Maryam Rajavi as the public face of the MEK.
Qisas or Qiṣāṣ is an Islamic term interpreted to mean "retaliation in kind", "eye for an eye", or retributive justice.
Diya in Islamic law, is the financial compensation paid to the victim or heirs of a victim in the cases of murder, bodily harm or property damage by mistake. It is an alternative punishment to qisas. In Arabic, the word means both blood money and ransom, and it is spelled sometimes as diyah or diyeh.
The Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist is a concept in Twelver Shia Islamic law which holds that until the reappearance of the "infallible Imam", at least some of the religious and social affairs of the Muslim world should be administered by righteous Shi'i jurists (Faqīh). The nature of these affairs are disputed.
Islamic Revolutionary Court is a special system of courts in the Islamic Republic of Iran designed to try those suspected of crimes such as smuggling, blaspheming, inciting violence, insulting the Supreme Leader, and attempting to overthrow the Islamic government. The court started its work after the 1979 Iranian Revolution.
Khomeinism refers to the religious and political ideas of the leader of the 1979 Iranian Islamic Revolution, Ruhollah Khomeini. In addition, Khomeinism may also refer to the ideology of the clerical class which has ruled the Islamic Republic of Iran, founded by Khomeini. It can also be used to refer to the "radicalization" of segments of the Twelver Shia populations of Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon, and the Iranian government's "recruitment" of Shia minorities in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Africa. The words Khomeinist and Khomeinists, derived from Khomeinism, can also be used to describe members of Iran's clerical rulers and attempt to differentiate them from "regular" Shia Muslim clerics.
Sheikh Fazlollah bin Abbas Mazindarani, also known as Fazlollah Noori, was a major figure in Iranian Constitutional Revolution (1905-1911) as a Twelver Shia Muslim scholar and politically connected mullah of the court of Iran's Shah. Originally a supporter of the constitution, he turned against it after the supporting constitution shah died and was replaced by one opposing the constitution. He was hanged as a traitor in 1909 by a court of the constitutionalist government for "sowing corruption and sedition on earth".
From the Imperial Pahlavi dynasty, through the Islamic Revolution (1979), to the era of the Islamic Republic of Iran, government treatment of Iranian citizens' rights has been criticized by Iranians, international human rights activists, writers, and NGOs. While the monarchy under the rule of the shahs was widely attacked by most Western watchdog organizations for having an abysmal human rights record, the government of the Islamic Republic which succeeded it is considered still worse by many.
The Persian Constitutional Revolution, also known as the Constitutional Revolution of Iran, took place between 1905 and 1911 during the Qajar dynasty. The revolution led to the establishment of a parliament in Persia (Iran), and has been called an "epoch-making episode in the modern history of Persia".
Casualties of the Iranian Revolution refers to those who lost their lives during the Iranian Revolution. Observers differ on how many people died during the Iranian Revolution. The current Islamic government uses the figure of 60,000 killed; in reference to this figure, the military historian Spencer C. Tucker notes that "Khomeini's regime grossly overstated the revolution's death toll for propaganda purposes". The sociologist Charles Kurzman, drawing on later more detailed records from the Islamic Republic, believes the number was closer to 2,000-3,000.
The Imperial State of Iran, the government of Iran during the Pahlavi dynasty, lasted from 1925 to 1979. During that time two monarchs — Reza Shah Pahlavi and his son Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi — employed secret police to stifle political dissent. The Pahlavi dynasty has sometimes been described as a "royal dictatorship", or "one-man rule". According to one history of the use of torture by the state in Iran, abuse of prisoners varied at times during the Pahlavi reign.
The ideology of the Iranian Revolution has been called a "complex combination" of Pan-Islamism, political populism, and Shia Islamic "religious radicalism"; "a struggle against paganism, oppression, and empire. Perhaps the most important of the diverse ideological interpretation of Islam within the grand alliance that led to the 1979 revolution were Khomeinism, Ali Shariati’s Islamic-left ideology, Mehdi Bazargan’s liberal-democratic Islam. Less powerful were the socialist guerrilla groups of Islamic and secular variants, and the secular constitutionalism in socialist and nationalist forms. Contributors to the ideology also included Jalal Al-e-Ahmad, who formulated the idea of Gharbzadegi—that Western culture must be rejected and fought as was a plague or an intoxication that alienated Muslims from their roots and identity.
Sharia means Islamic law based on Islamic concepts based from Quran and Hadith. Since the early Islamic states of the eighth and ninth centuries, Sharia always existed alongside other normative systems.
The Islamic Republic of Iran was founded after the 1979 overthrow of the Pahlavi dynasty by the Islamic Revolution, and its legal code is based on Islamic law or sharia, although many aspects of civil law have been retained, and it is integrated into a civil law legal system. According to the constitution of the Islamic Republic, the judiciary in Iran "is an independent power". The entire legal system—"from the Supreme Court to regional courts, all the way down to local and revolutionary courts"—is under the purview of the Ministry of Justice, but in addition to a Minister of Justice and head of the Supreme Court, there is also a separate appointed Head of the Judiciary. Parliamentary bills pertaining to the constitution are vetted by the Council of Guardians.
Shia Islamism is the usage of Shia Islam in politics. Most study and reporting on Islamism has been focused on Sunni Islamist movements. Shia Islamism, a previously very small ideology, was boosted after the Iranian Revolution led by Ruhollah Khomeini, whose Shia Islamist policies became known as Khomeinism.
Pahlavi Dynasty overthrown in 1979 iranian revolution.