Constitutional ambiguities and dual legitimacy

At the foundation of the Iranian legal order is a dual claim: the state derives legitimacy from both divine law (shariʿa as interpreted in the Shiʿi tradition) and the authority of modern legal codes, specifically in procedural laws. This dualism creates permanent tension. The constitution establishes a judiciary, legislature, and executive with formal competencies, but it also empowers the Supreme Leader and Guardian Council (and a wide range of institutions directly designated by them) to override or reshape legislation in the name of Islamic authenticity. This institutional layering makes legal certainty elusive. Courts may be bound by statute in theory, but in practice their decisions can be revised or nullified by higher religious-political authorities. Rule of law is proclaimed but constantly mediated by discretionary powers.

The volume opens with Mirjam Künkler’s substantial introduction (Chapter 1, “Governing the Law in the Islamic Republic of Iran,” 1–44). Künkler situates the Islamic Republic’s legal order within the longue durée of Iranian constitutionalism, from the Qajar reforms through the Pahlavi state to the 1979 Constitution and the 1989 amendments. She identifies three mechanisms by which law has been reshaped: reinterpretation of shariʿa norms, statutory revision, and institutional engineering. Yet these mechanisms, she argues, operate within a framework that persistently subordinates legality to the doctrine of velāyat-e faqih (guardianship of the jurist) and security imperatives (9–11). The chapter provides a general outline of the volume and also catalogues current rule-of-law challenges: overlapping jurisdictions, political vetting of judges and lawyers, and the routine invocation of “national security” as a trump card. This framing sets the conceptual tone for the volume.

Emphasizing the breadth of perspectives and areas of expertise represented in the book, Künkler further adds:

Chapter 2 (by Silvia Tellenbach, “The Islamic Penal Code of 2013: Traditions and Innovations,” 45–65) analyzes the Islamic Penal Code (IPC) of 2013, which codified criminal law more systematically than before. Accordingly, while codification has produced greater consistency in criminal law, it also demonstrates—through the anchoring of punishments—the state’s unwillingness to liberalize its penal core. the IPC preserved traditional Islamic categories—hadd (lit. “limit,” pl. hodud, corporal punishments), qesās (retaliation, punishments in retaliation for homicide and bodily injury), diyeh (pl. diyāt, blood money), and taʿzir (pl. taʿzirāt, discretionary punishments)—while also introducing procedural innovations and clarifications (45). Codification aimed at legal certainty, but interpretation remains contingent on judicial discretion and political context. Here, rules of evidence include confession, witness testimony, oaths, and “knowledge of the judge” (ʿelm-e qāzi), which allows judges to base decisions on their own knowledge, raising concerns about arbitrary rulings (55).

Drewery Dyke and Hadi Enayat then take readers inside the criminal justice system (Chapter 3, “The Administration of Criminal Justice in Iran: Ideology, Judicial Personalism, and the Cynical Manipulation of Security,” 66–103), highlighting procedural deficiencies, security-state interference, and the persistence of judicial discretion bordering on arbitrariness. This important chapter investigates how criminal justice functions in practice. The authors emphasize how judicial discretion remains vast, undermining predictability, and show that security charges operate as a permanent state of exception. Procedural rights exist on paper but are frequently undermined: long pre-trial detentions, limited access to defense counsel, and the influence of security services are common. Revolutionary courts, operating alongside ordinary courts, handle many politically sensitive cases with minimal transparency (84). The prison system is a revealing site. Chronic overcrowding, poor conditions, and uneven enforcement of sentences show the gap between legislation and reality (99). Reforms to alleviate overcrowding often stumble against political reluctance, resource shortages, and an over-reliance on incarceration as social control.

The volume’s engagement with criminal justice culminates in Anna Enayat and Hadi Enayat’s chapter on prisons (Chapter 7, “The Administration of Criminal Justice in Iran: Ideology, Judicial Personalism, and the Cynical Manipulation of Security,” 187–235). Drawing on a broad range of data, the authors document chronic overcrowding, rising incarceration rates, and the proliferation of categories of political prisoners. They trace overcrowding to punitive sentencing laws (especially for drug-related and non-intentional offenses), high levels of pretrial detention, chronic underinvestment in prison infrastructure, and weak proportionality in sentencing (188–189). The chapter shows that the prison population has more than doubled since the 1990s, making overcrowding a defining feature of Iran’s penal system and leading to severe prison conditions, including inadequate food, healthcare, sanitation, and heightened violence (195–201). While the state has periodically relied on amnesties, furloughs, and limited reforms to manage prison populations, these measures have provided only short-term relief and often obscured underlying capacity constraints. Political protests have also repeatedly reversed “decarceration” efforts (206). In particular, this chapter makes the distinction between “ordinary” prisoners and security or “political” prisoners while arguing that the distinction between the two is often blurred and obscured in practice (230). The chapter concludes that overcrowding reflects deeper systemic priorities privileging control and punishment over rehabilitation and durable legal reform. The charts and long-run series make this chapter one of the most data-driven contributions. The authors’ analysis highlights how administrative incapacity compounds punitive excess, turning prisons into both instruments of repression and sites of humanitarian crisis.

Family law is one of the most sensitive domains, tied to religious authority and social norms. Chapter 4 (“Shiʿi Family Law under the Rule of Law? The Iranian Model and Current Approaches in the Shiʿi World,” 104–134), by Hannah L. Richter (pseudonym), explores Shiʿi family law. The author demonstrates how judges have selectively modernized family statutes while retaining core patriarchal structures, showing that the Iranian model combines codified Shiʿi jurisprudence with modern statutes covering marriage, divorce, custody, and inheritance. While reforms have occasionally expanded women’s rights—such as greater divorce rights or custody considerations—clerical and political resistance has limited deeper change. Compared with other Shiʿi contexts (such as Iraq, Bahrain, and Kuwait), Iran’s system is both more codified and more rigid. The analysis is nuanced, though at times more descriptive than critical: the normative implications of such hybridization for women’s rights could have been drawn out more strongly. Still, the chapter provides essential context for understanding how sharīʿa jurisprudence is selectively codified in the family domain.

Mirjam Künkler’s contribution on the Iranian Bar Association (Chapter 5, “Rule of Law or Rule by Law? Iran’s Bar Association as a Pawn in Islamic–Republican Contestations,” 135–158) is among the book’s highlights, illustrating the precariousness of professional autonomy. She traces the bar’s trajectory from the Pahlavi era through the revolution, showing how its autonomy has waxed and waned, concluding that the bar serves as a bellwether for the rule of law: when autonomous, it shields rights; when co-opted, it legitimates repression. Periods of relative independence have allowed lawyers to provide limited protections for defendants; periods of co-optation have transformed the bar into an instrument of repression (149–150). The confrontation between the state and the bar is a direct consequence of the judiciary’s establishment of its own in-house certification mechanism for their own kind of lawyers, de facto crowding out and marginalizing those who are independently trained and certified by the bar association. Recurrent protests by the bar association serve to mobilize resistance against efforts to shut it down or “incorporate” it into officialdom. The narrative is richly historical. Accordingly, the bar’s fate is emblematic of the broader struggle between rule of law and rule by law in Iran, effectively illustrating how, despite setbacks, professional autonomy can create small islands of legality (156).

The focus then shifts to institutions charged with enforcing or mediating the law. Saeid Golkar (in Chapter 6, “Law Enforcement and the Judiciary in Postrevolutionary Iran,” 159–186) offers a detailed anatomy of Iran’s police force (NAJA). This chapter, enriched with empirical clarity and organizational charts, reveals the increasing militarization of policing and its subordination to political and security imperatives (175). Rather than acting as neutral enforcers of public order, the police emerge as politicized agents of the Islamic Republic. The overlap between judicial authority and the Revolutionary Guards or intelligence services creates a fragmented system in which due process is fragile.

In Chapter 8 (“Legal Barriers to Accessing Vital Medical Services and Creative Responses to Overcoming These,” 236–259), Arash Alaei and Kamiar Alaei—physicians with long experience in Iranian public health—examine the legal regulation of access to vital medical services. They argue that restrictive laws on harm reduction and vulnerable groups impede care, yet also show how:

These workarounds highlight both the rigidity of statutory rules and the creativity of actors navigating them. The strength here is the vivid insider account; the limitation is that the discussion sometimes drifts into advocacy, with less systematic legal analysis. However, the chapter convincingly shows how legality and professional ethics collide in everyday practice.

With further reference to the medical field, Chapter 14 (“The Legal Situation Regarding Assisted Reproduction in Iran: Current Developments and Concerns,” by Shirin Naef, 414–443) on assisted reproduction is original and richly ethnographic. Drawing on ethnographic research, it shows that Shiʿi jurisprudence has both enabled cutting-edge reproductive technologies and imposed doctrinal restrictions. Accordingly, Iran is a pioneer in bioethics among many Muslim countries, permitting assisted reproductive technologies such as in vitro fertilization (IVF), gamete donation, and surrogacy under certain conditions (416, 430–431). Yet regulation is uneven, sometimes progressive, sometimes restrictive. The law oscillates between openness to scientific innovation and conservatism rooted in religious interpretations. The chapter stands out for its originality and for complicating the stereotype of Islamic law as merely restrictive. If anything, the chapter might have further compared Iran’s approach to that of Sunni-majority states. Nonetheless, it is a model of how anthropological methods enrich legal studies.

Censorship of arts and culture

In Chapter 13 (“Multilayered Mechanisms of Control and Censorship of Arts and Culture in the Islamic Republic of Iran,” 386–413), Roozbeh Mirebrahimi and Azadeh Pourzand address how law and regulatory institutions shape the visual and performing arts, film, literature, music, and censorship frameworks. The chapter demonstrates how law becomes a site of ideological control and how cultural regulation exemplifies “rule by law.” The authors describe an elaborate lattice of institutions that pre-emptively structure cultural production. Multiple institutions oversee the arts—ministries, censorship boards, security agencies—producing overlapping licensing and monitoring systems (401–406). Law becomes an instrument of ideological control, ensuring conformity to Islamic and revolutionary values. Artists must navigate shifting red lines, facing legal penalties or bans for transgression. This contribution is engaging and provides one of the liveliest chapters on censorship, though it leans heavily on institutional mapping at the expense of close legal analysis.

Chapter 9 (“Reform from Within? Hākemiyat-e Qānun from the Reformist Era to 2022,” 260–288), by Mirjam Künkler, traces the history of “reform from within,” particularly during the reformist era of the late 1990s and early 2000s. Reformist politicians and legal actors invoked the language of rule of law to push for greater judicial independence, procedural rights, and political openness. Yet their efforts were repeatedly blocked or diluted by conservative institutions—most notably, the Guardian Council, judiciary, and security bodies (261). The failure of reformist initiatives underscores the structural limits on legal transformation.

Religious and ethnic minorities—such as Sunnis, Kurds, Baluch, Christians, Jews, and especially Baha’is—face systemic discrimination. In Chapter 10 (“Iran’s Religious and Ethnic Minorities in the Eyes of the Judiciary and the Security Apparatus,” 289–330), Shahin Milani finds that minorities are disproportionately targeted under national-security charges and argues that the judiciary and security apparatus often treat minority claims as threats to national security (290). Legal recognition is uneven: some minorities are formally recognized in the constitution, others are excluded. Even recognized groups struggle with the unequal enforcement of rights and limitations on religious freedom. While richly researched and persuasive, this chapter is largely top-down, with limited space for minority voices themselves.

Labor law illustrates another sphere of constraint. In Chapter 11 (“Labor Rights in Postrevolutionary Iran,” 331–356), Stella Morgana maintains that workers’ rights to organize and bargain collectively are formally recognized but practically suppressed. Accordingly, constitutional guarantees of workers’ rights have been systematically hollowed out by weak enforcement. In addition, independent unions face harassment, strikes are criminalized, and labor courts tend to side with employers or the state (332). This chapter takes the state’s pro-labor rhetoric (repeated in every presidential campaign) and shows how hollow it rings across the party and factional landscape. In essence, and despite all its claims to justice, Islamic law has been used and misused to undermine workers’ rights and solidify highly unequal property relations. Regrettably, much of the political economy literature on Iran has overlooked the ways in which post-1989 labor law reforms have been systematically weakened by Guardian Council vetoes and legal loopholes instituted by the Expediency Council (335). Law thus functions more as a tool for disciplining labor than empowering it.

External pressures and international context

Iran’s entanglement with global politics has significant legal consequences. In Chapter 12 (“The Effects of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and Subsequent US Withdrawal, on Iranian Law,” 357–385), Faezeh Manteghi and Seyed Emadeddin Tabatabaei argue that the 2015 nuclear deal (the JCPOA), briefly opened space for trade law, investment contracts, and regulatory reforms. In particular, this chapter underlines how far Majles reforms went to establish compliance with the JCPOA, and that these reforms would have fundamentally transformed the Iranian economy by diversifying ownership and thus ending the de facto hold of parastatal organizations and their networks over the industrial and financial sector. But the U.S. withdrawal in 2018 and re-imposition of sanctions reversed many of these gains (358). Iranian law had to adapt to fluctuating external pressures, exposing its vulnerability to geopolitics. Even the specialists taking part in the extensive public policy debates about the JCPOA in the U.S. were usually not aware of the extensive efforts by the Majles to establish compliance on the Iranian side. This episode demonstrates that Iran’s legal order is not self-contained: global economic structures and international agreements directly shape domestic law, sometimes more powerfully than internal moves to reform.

In the concluding Chapter 15 (“Conclusions: Regressions and Progressions in the Rule of Law of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” 444–462), the volume editors, Hadi Enayat and Mirjam Künkler, draw on preceding chapters and paint a nuanced, sobering portrait of Iranian legal institutions. Law is central to governance but rarely autonomous. Reform is imaginable but constrained by structural power imbalances, religious oversight, and international pressures. The book ultimately underscores a larger insight relevant beyond Iran: in hybrid theocratic-authoritarian regimes, law is never simply a matter of codes and courts. It is inseparable from struggles over legitimacy, ideology, and power. Iran’s experience reveals both the promise and the perils of invoking the “rule of law” in contexts where law itself is deeply politicized.

Taken as a whole, this volume makes a substantive contribution to sociolegal research on Iran, offering sustained empirical and theoretical depth, careful engagement with primary sources and fieldwork in Iran, and a consistently comparative perspective on Iran’s legal and justice system—dimensions that have not always been adequately developed in the existing literature. Its central message—that law in the Islamic Republic is both pervasive and fragile, both modernized and subordinated—offers a powerful lens on the dilemmas of legal order under ideological rule. For anyone concerned with the fate of law in authoritarian frameworks, this volume is essential reading.

All chapters utilize a wide range of primary and up-to-date secondary sources that offer a valuable research tool for scholars interested in or working on the topic. The book also comes with a helpful chronology, list of abbreviations, and glossary at the outset.