An Overview of the Article 12 of the Organization and Procedure of Administrative Justice Court Act

Since the Iranian legal system is under the influence of the French legal system and partly relies on the letter of the law, the judge, in the first place, is committed to comply with the letter of the law. The ambiguity of terms related to judicial review poses serious challenges for the General Board of the Court of Juctice. The question is: What is the meaning of the terms stipulated in the article 12 and what is the criterion for distinguishing them from each other? It has been hypothesized that the discovery of instances of unlawfulness or "contrary to law" and establishing a criterion for distinguishing the terms stipulated in laws reside in legal definition or justified interpretation. The articleˊs findings obtained by using library resources and analytical methods, show that the phrase "contrary to law" has a general sense and the other terms mentioned in article 12 are, in fact, the instances of it. Therefore, such legislation should contain the term "violation of the law" to prevent confusion. Second, if the court is seeking to achieve the objective rights of the people enshrined in the article 173 of the Constitution, "violation of the law" leads to the control of state regulations as to their compatibility with the international treaties in the framework of the Article 9 of the Civil Code. This special capacity for resorting to human rights treaties is an important issue. The reform in the framework of the judicial review of administrative act could be made on the basis of administrative law as existed in England and France. To achieve these objectives the law can be modified by providing legal definitions of terms stipulated in the interpretation of Article 12 and also an interpretation should be provided by the Parliament or a reasonable interpretation of the law by the General Board using all available capacities.