Public Law Studies Quarterly

The Standards of Invoking Legislative History in Legal Interpretation

Document Type : Article

Authors

Reza Pourmohammadi 1
Hosein simaei sarraf 2

1 Assistant Professor, Department of Islmaic Law, Women and Family Research Institute, Qom, Iran

2 Associate Professor, Department of Private Law, Faculty of Law, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran

https://doi.org/10.22059/jplsq.2022.337678.3007
Abstract
In the Iranian legal system, use of legislative history (including parliamentary materials) in legal interpretation is quite prevalent. Judges and jurists always try to remain faithful to the legislative history and refrain from giving any interpretation contrary to it. Despite the role of legislative history in interpretation, it’s been widely neglected in our legal literature. The following paper explores this matter with regard to Iranian law. It develops arguments based on legal theory, constitutional law, and thus affords deeper insight into the current discussion on legal methods. Despite the role of legislative history in legal interpretations, its nature, types and criteria are unclear and unresolved. In this paper, first a precise definition of legislative history and its types is provided, and then the validity of legislative history is discussed , and explained how legal schools can invoke legislative history based on the assumptions they have previously accepted. In the second part, the main criteria for applying legislative history in legal interpretation is stated. Finally, (Part 3), it has been tried to identify the main applications of legislative history in legal interpretation along with real examples in the Iranian legal system.

Keywords

the Guardian Council
constitution
intentionalism
committee report
Subjects

  1. Enlgish

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Public Law Studies Quarterly
Volume 54, Issue 3
Autumn 2024
Autumn 2024
Pages 1645-1665

  • Receive Date 26 January 2022
  • Revise Date 09 April 2022
  • Accept Date 22 May 2022

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