Protest, as a fundamental form of social action, is deeply intertwined with the dominant conception of political subjectivity, the structure of power, and the status of law. In Iranian history, protest is not merely a reactive behavior; it is a vital indicator of the evolving relationship between state and society. Adopting a phenomenological approach grounded in public law, this article examines the transformation of “protest” during the transition from subject hood to citizenship, spanning the pre-constitutional era to the Constitutional Revolution. The central question is how protest evolved from a moral and religious act largely situated outside the formal legal order into a phenomenon intelligible within the horizon of law and public rights.
This article posits that protest serves as a mirror reflecting the transformation of political humanity in Iran. In the pre-constitutional era, the political individual was defined as a subject (ra‘iyat), precluding the possibility of protest in a juridical sense. Responses to power were typically expressed through supplication, endurance, or individual petitions for redress.As social and economic crises intensified in the nineteenth century, a pre-political collective consciousness emerged, creating the conditions for organized social dissent. Within this context, the Tobacco Protest serves as a historical turning point, representing the first widespread, organized challenge to the state and overturning the prevailing perception of society’s incapacity vis-à-vis political power. The article demonstrates that while these protests possessed social legitimacy, they lacked juridical articulation prior to the Constitutional Revolution. The Constitutional Movement, therefore, represented a pivotal attempt to translate the social experience of protest into a legal framework grounded in the recognition of the citizen, the limitation of power, and the rule of law. Ultimately, this article argues that the right to protest is the historical product of this transformative trajectory, and that any analysis of public law in Iran remains incomplete without accounting for this development.