A Study of the Legal and Historical Foundations of the Evolution of the Constitution of Mashruteh

One of the most important achievements of Iran’s “Enghelab-e Mashruteh” was the Constitution. While it was considered as the most important guaranteeing document of the principles of the constitutional movement, it was changed and revised many times over the course of seven decades. Some revisions of the principles seemed inevitable due to the reign of the monarchy in the first decades. However, the 1949 amendment which granted the Shah with the right to dissolve the Houses, the 1957 amendment which gave the Shah the veto power over the financial decisions of the parliament, or the 1967 amendment regarding how to choose the heir to the throne led to changes in the constitution which cannot be justified through the legal grounds available in historical documents. It seems, however, that behind these legal aspects, political motives of the authoritarian monarchy has been the cause that led to these changes and disregarding the foundations of the Constitution. This research is an interdisciplinary work which studies the historical circumstances and the legal arguments put forward in accordance with these conditions, and criticizes the amendments to the Constitution.