A Comparative Study of Fact-Witness Payment in Islamic and American Law

A fact witness might incur damages as the result of attending court to testify. These damages are chargeable. It has been accepted and legislated by the legislative power. But paying fact witness for mere witnessing or testifying engrosses some obstacles in Iranian and American laws. Generally speaking, these obstacles are the prohibition of payment for witnessing due to its indispensableness and concern about payment impact on the testimony substance. In Islamic jurisprudence in witnessing only the former hurdle exists, whereas both can occur in testifying in which the latter is even more important. In U.S law only the latter obstacles exists.  In this article, the first hurdle is rejected and a hypothesis would be proved based on which if fact witness payment is observed and controlled by courts, the mentioned concern can be eliminated and, therefore, fact witness payment would be lawful. One of the significant results of this discussion is that the mere payment to fact-witness does not render his/her witness invalid.