Comparative Study of the Scope of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Constitution: From Written to Unwritten Document

Abstract

Although it seems that the written document of the constitution regulates and controls the existing constitutional order in the written constitution countries, the reality is that "politics in progress" and existing political transactions are not only not fully under the control of the written document of the constitution, but even in some cases, politics has prevailed over rights and determines the way and direction of the implementation of legal norms. As a result, focusing on the form and format of the Constitution should not prevent the examination of the content and political realities in society. The present article, with a descriptive-analytical method and by studying the opinions of the Guardian Council and other available sources, seeks to answer the question that, does Iran's constitutional law function fully according to the written constitution? This study also tries to discover more about the legal or political nature of the basic order in Iran. The result of the research indicates that in Iran’s system of constitutional rights, unwritten and interpretable components link the written text of the constitution with some unwritten areas. On credit, Iran’s constitution is neither completely legal nor completely political, and has both written and unwritten aspects, and the opinions of the Guardian Council are a window to understand them.

Keywords

• written constitution
• unwritten constitution
• guardian council
• basic judge
• interpretation of the constitution