The Evaluation of Testimonies by Judges from the Perspective of Imami Jurisprudence and Iranian Law

In a legal system where judges are entrusted with the evaluation of evidence, the credibility or lack thereof of testimonies hinges on the confidence they instill in the judge. This evaluation is not uniformly applied to all pieces of evidence. Testimony, or "Shahadat," consists of certain, definite reports of a necessary right in favor of a third party, presented by a non-sovereign source. On the other hand, legal indicators are the circumstances that lead to the judge's knowledge and are derived from three sources: customary legal presumptions, societal customs and practices, and circumstantial evidence, all of which are considered by the judge with due diligence. If these indicators engender inner conviction and belief in the judicial decision, they can be regarded as judicial evidence and can form the basis for a court's judgment.Regarding testimony, the legislator has assigned the authority to evaluate it to the court in Article 241 of the Civil Procedure Law of Iran (CPL) enacted in 1999, while the Civil Code of Iran (CCI) enacted in 2013 remains silent on the evaluation of testimony. However, Articles 176, 177, and 197 of the Islamic Penal Code (IPC) enacted in 2013 elaborate in detail on the assessment of testimony by the court.This research, employing an analytical and descriptive method, delves into the issue of how to resolve conflicts between testimonies and the legal and jurisprudential requirements, as well as the judge's knowledge resulting from legal indicators, from the perspective of Imami jurisprudence and Iranian law. The research concludes that judges possess extensive discretion in determining the conditions and assessing the value of testimonies, but this discretion is contingent upon the fulfillment of the legal and jurisprudential requirements for testimony