Document Type : Article
Authors
1 Department of Public Law and International Law, Faculty of Law and Political Science, University of Shiraz, Shiraz, Iran.
2 Assistant Professor of Law, Administrative and Economic Sciences Faculty, University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran.
Abstract
This article explores the conditions for establishing political authority as the sole legitimate gateway to the theory of the state. A pivotal dimension of this inquiry—central to the jurisprudential debate between Carl Schmitt and Hans Kelsen—concerns the protection of the legal order as a prerequisite for constituting political authority. From Kelsen’s perspective, safeguarding the legal order requires maintaining formal coherence among legal norms, where each norm derives its validity from a superior constitutional norm. Schmitt, conversely, posits the sovereign’s political decision as the foundation for preserving the legal order (or constitutional guardianship). The study argues that the imperative to protect the legal order (constitutional maintenance) correlates with the Islamic state’s overarching duty: upholding Sharīʿa as its constitutional bedrock. Thinkers like Mirzā Nā’īnī, Abul A’lā Mawdūdī, and Imam Khomeini engaged with these questions of authority-formation, offering discourses that this article reinterprets through the framework of constitutional guardianship. Without this lens, critical aspects of their contributions to constitutional state theory risk remaining obscured.
Keywords
Main Subjects
English
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