A Comparative Study on the Principle of Legality and its Rules in the Iranian and English Criminal Legal Systems

The principle of legality is a fundamental principle of criminal law within all statutory legal systems. The principle has been recognized in the Iranian legal system which has been influenced by Islamic law as well as French law especially since the beginning of the codification era. Conversely, in English law which is mainly defined by common law, recently have been taken significant steps towardsthe recognition of the principle of legality. By introducing a schematic structure of a criminal law theory, the present article explores the position of this principle and the rules driven from. Although the position of the legality principle differs in the legal systems in question, the article shows that some similarities between the rules driven from the principle can be found to be corresponding with the logic of a general language of criminal law theory.