The Proofs of Prohibition of Establishing a New Jurisprudence

One of the arguments cited by Imamia jurists in jurisprudential and Usul al-Fiqh books to prove or disprove a verdict is the prohibition of establishing a new jurisprudence. Despite the relatively high use of this argument among jurists, no definition of establishing a new jurisprudence has been offered nor has the reason behind its prohibition been presented. What this research seeks to find is the concept of establishing a new jurisprudence and the reason behind its prohibition. For this purpose, the Imamia jurisprudential and Usul al-Fiqh works and other written documents have been searched and studied using various keywords and after finding examples of jurists' citations, the authors have attempted to discover the concept and the reason behind prohibition of establishing a new jurisprudence. The result of this research is that establishing a new jurisprudence has been considered to be the same as having rare opinions and changing the permanent verdicts. The probable bases of this prohibition which is obtained in some way from the opinions of jurists are: the correlation between establishing a new jurisprudence and opposition to Idjma, contradiction with the necessities of the age of the Infallibles, contradiction with the spirit of worship, contradiction with the standards of Usul-al-Fiqh, contradiction with the requirements of religion and contradiction with rectifying the effective cause. By examining each case, its inability to prove the prohibition of establishing a new jurisprudence has become obvious. Therefore, it can be said that establishing a new jurisprudence is not per se prohibited; however, this does not mean that a new jurisprudence is in contradiction with the traditional jurisprudence. Instead, it means the necessity of applying strong arguments in jurisprudential inferences.