Law in the shadow of judicial expediency (Criticism of Unification Judgment No. 742 issued by General Board of the Supreme Court of the country)

With the approval of the Criminal Procedure Law of 2013, the judicial authorities confronted difficulties in interpreting and applying this law, and note of Article 478 of this law, which concerns the issue of suspending some criminal judgments upon a request for re-trial. As a result, various panels of the Supreme Court, after the approval of this law, adopted different opinions on the implementation of this note. Some of these branches followed the absolute implementation of the note and without analyzing the merits of the case, they proceeded to issue an order to suspend the enforcement of the judgment. In contrast, other branches made their judgments to apply or not to apply the note according to the analysis of the merits of the case.Following the appearance of this duality and the issuance of divergent verdicts, the General Board of the country's Supreme Court, proceeded to issue the unificaition judgment 742; a decision that, from the perspective of some jurists, has pursued an attitude and strategy different from the legislator's objective and has even led to the disuse of the aforementioned note.Studying and criticizing this decision of the Supreme Court as a unified judicial precedent is meaningful in several ways; first, in terms of investigating the scope of the authorities of the Supreme Court , and second, in terms of analyzing the decision under discussion in terms of its practical impact on the process of cases. In light of the sensitivity of the subject, the criticism of this decision can be effective by pointing out some deficiencies not only in the context of its subject but in general in the process of issuing Supreme Court decisions as a unified judicial precedent and the need to establish a framework for legal interpretation and the direction of judicial policy.