Islamic government based on the rule of law was a cornerstone of Mohammad Khatami's successful candidacy for President of Iran in 1997. His election and subsequent tenure in office generated extensive domestic debate about the compatibility of the rule of law with state doctrine and practices since the 1979 revolution, and this debate has sharpened with the widespread protests over the official results of the 2009 presidential election. However, as Majid Mohammadi makes clear in Judicial Reform and Reorganization in 20th Century Iran, the struggle to establish core elements of the rule of law in Iran, especially an independent judiciary, has its roots in the century preceding the imposition of Ayatollah Khomeini's revolutionary form of Islamic government, the vilāyat-i faqīh (guardianship of the jurist). Mohammadi's explanation of the dynamic interrelationship among society, politics, and law in four distinct periods of modern Iranian history provides a useful and important perspective on the current nature and problems of the rule of law in Iran today.
After an extensive introduction reviewing various theories that seek to explain the relationship among law, government, and society, Mohammadi breaks down his subject into historical periods: the postconstitutional revolution era, the modernization era, the post-Islamic revolution era, and the post-Khomeini era. Several themes emerge from his description and comparison of politics, law, courts, and the (mostly fruitless) efforts at judicial reform in each of these periods. Law in general and the courts in particular consistently served as instruments to support and legitimize the governing regimes. Sporadic efforts at judicial reform to make the legal system more responsive to the needs of the people and to promote the rule of law, including clear legal rules, broad accessibility to courts, due process, and even-handedness on the part of judges, all failed to take root and survive.
Drawing on his own extensive research as well as the work of other scholars, the author offers a significant amount of information about each period not readily accessible elsewhere. The establishment of a secular judiciary in the first period (the era following the constitutional revolution) is revealed as a step by step process to relegate the religious courts to a minor role in the legal system in favor of state and customary courts. Building on this process, the second period resulted in the complete subordination of the judiciary to the executive branch of government, in which the essential component of the rule of law—an independent judiciary—was effectively eliminated. Mohammadi describes this as one element of the Pahlavis' program to secularize virtually all aspects of Iranian society. The third period, the post-Islamic revolution era, sought to reverse this secularization program, which nevertheless required a continued subordination of the law and courts to the political program of the country's leaders, now religious rather than secular. The author notes how thousands of religious figures who lacked the education and training in law normally required of a mujtahid were brought into the judicial and administrative bureaucracy to implement the vilāyat-i faqīh. They were entirely subordinated to the governmental hierarchy, a process that exposes the revolution's disregard both for Shiʿi legal tradition and the classical Islamic rule of law. In the fourth period, the post-Khomeini era, the process of Islamicization merged with the historical Persian model of authoritarian rule, in which political considerations dominate all other considerations, including those of the rule of law. Despite efforts by such jurists as Yazdi and Shahrudi to make the judicial process more responsive to the needs of society, the judiciary has remained a tool of authoritarian rulers, and the author does not conceal his dismay for the detrimental effects of this development in such rule of law areas as equal rights for minorities, clarity of legal rules, open judicial proceedings, and freedom of judges from undue political interference.
The book's final chapter successfully ties together the important themes that link the four periods. It also demonstrates the continuity of Iranian legal processes from the premodern era to the present time, despite the occasional and brief periods of democratic and constitutional reform, and the distinct forms of government that characterize each of these periods. Mohammadi's description of how the Islamicization process under Khomeini has given way to a sultanistic/hierocratic model of rule is especially noteworthy. In essence, it is not dissimilar to the authoritarian rule of the 20th-century Pahlavis and the earlier Qajar and Safavid dynasties, and this reversion to authoritarianism illustrates the difficulty in implementing lasting judicial reform in the face of entrenched social and political interests within Iranian society.
It is unfortunate for the reader that the book suffers throughout from serious editing problems. The frequent absence of the definite article, peculiar punctuation and sentence structure, and improper verb forms create the appearance of a nearly verbatim translation into English of a Farsi text. Sentences are occasionally repeated within the same paragraph, and there are a number of typographical errors. As a result, reading this book is often difficult and occasionally tedious.
Nevertheless, the wealth of detail and insights offered by the author make the effort worthwhile. The seven appendices are a useful supplement to the text, and numerous charts on the structure of the judicial system, including one for each of the four periods described by the author, are similarly helpful. The footnotes are extensive and add much useful detail to the text, and the bibliography is exhaustive. In sum, this book is an important resource for scholars and others interested in the complex modern history and development of the rule of law in Iran.
