Document Type : Original Article
Authors
PhD student in Public Law, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran
10.22034/jrpl.2026.736020
Abstract
Focusing on the years leading up to the Constitutional Revolution in Iran, this article examines the internal intellectual traditions and discourses that, despite the dominance of autocracy and the theory of absolute monarchy, possessed the capacity to constrain the King’s power. These traditions provided the necessary theoretical groundwork for the formation of public law and the establishment of a constitutional system. Employing a historical-ideological analysis method and investigating eight major traditions/discourses (Shi’a political-legal thought, the discourse of law, the tradition of andarznameh [advice literature] writing, religious reformist thought, progressivist discourse, the discourse of Edalat Khaneh [Houses of Justice], the theory of divine deposit and trust, and the institution of Waqf [endowment]), this study argues that the limitation of power in this era was rooted in a complex and interwoven system of ideas. From the Shi’a jurisprudential-theological tradition, with its components of clerical deputyship and the conditional legitimacy of government, to the discourse of law featuring mechanisms for the separation of powers and the rule of law; from the tradition of andarznameh writing, emphasizing justice and the right to criticize, to religious reformist thought, which reinterpreted concepts of consultation (Shura) and public interest; from the progressivist discourse, which transformed concepts of nation, homeland, and functional legitimacy, to the discourse of Edalat Khaneh, focusing on the right to petition and the transition toward institution-building. Furthermore, the theories of divine deposit/trust and the institution of Waqf provided robust legal-philosophical and socio-economic frameworks, respectively, for limiting power. These traditions, through their interaction and occasional confrontation, shifted Iranian society’s intellectual climate from the "absolute legitimacy of the King" toward "constitutionalism and accountability of power." This process paved the way for the transformation of scattered moral constraints into institutionalized and systematic limitations of public law within the Constitutional Constitution.
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