Document Type : Research Paper
Author
PhD in Private Law, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran
Abstract
One of the issues facing the Iranian legal system today is the unpredictability of judicial judgments; as in some cases, they are so unpredictable that individuals, no matter how familiar with legal issues, cannot predict the court's decisions.
The Predictability of judicial decisions in the Iranian legal system is both theoretically and practically essential, and unpredictability has harmful individual, social, economic, and legal effects. As is said today, predictability of law is one of the fundamental values of democracy and the Law-abiding government, and law should be as understandable, transparent, and predictable as possible. In other words, the legal system should be predictable and act in harmony in all similar cases.
Based on these necessities, the judiciary in the judicial security document approved on 2020/10/14 and also the judicial transformation document approved on 2020/12/26 have emphasized on predictability of results of the legal system (judicial judgments). As stated in Article 2, Paragraph 1 of the Judicial Security Document: “The principle of legitimate trust is the possibility of predicting the results of the legal system, which can ultimately attract the trust of citizens in the judicial system.” Also, the Document on the Transformation and Excellence of the Judiciary, approved on 2024/3/26, lists creating transparency in the process of hearing and issuing judicial decisions as one of the transformational programs of that authority.
From a practical point of view, it is not possible to achieve judicial justice without the predictability of judicial judgments. Justice has been interpreted in many ways, including in the form of the Aristotelian principle: "Treat like cases alike." Waldron says: "It is unfair to apply the law as a lottery, with the result that the application of the law varies depending on the luck of the individual. Individuals should not rely on their good fortune or fear their bad fortune in the law that applies to their claims."
The unpredictability of judicial decisions in the legal system has harmful individual, social, economic and legal effects. The unpredictability of judicial decisions from an individual perspective causes uncertainty in the regulation of legal relations and disrupts freedom of decision-making, as a person who intends to take a legal action is unable to predict the fate of their action. Socially, the Unpredictability of judicial decisions causes disorder, chaos, and unrest, and economically, it causes a decrease in domestic and foreign investment. From a legal perspective, if different decisions are issued in cases with the same subject, it will ultimately lead to a decrease in trust in the judicial system, as it is being accused, delaying proceedings and reducing judicial efficiency. From the perspective of the relationship between law and ethics, the predictability of judicial decisions should be considered one of the ethical principles of law.
In this article, using a descriptive-analytical method, it was concluded that the lack of legal certainty, legal transparency, legal coherence, and legal stability are the most important reasons for the unpredictability of judgments in the Iranian legal system. The vagueness of laws, the influence of non-legal factors in the issuance of judicial decisions, the granting of unregulated discretion to judges in some cases, as well as the dispersion, duality of sources and bases for lawmaking, and the frequent changes to some laws have caused legal transparency, certainty, coherence, and stability to diminish. In principle, the unpredictability of judicial decisions can be eliminated by providing solutions that lead to increased transparency, certainty, coherence, and legal stability.
Formalism, both at the legislative and judicial interpretation stages, also increases the predictability of judgments. The more formalistic a legal system is, the more predictable it is. In fact, following the teachings of the formalist school increases the unpredictability of judicial decisions. The formalist school introduces law as a complete, comprehensive, regular, and always understandable work, and in its justification, it cites reasons such as order and coherence, preventing chaos and the dictatorship of judges, and turning the trial into an arbitrary process. As such, certainty, predictability, integrity, and uniformity of law are among the advantages listed for the formalist school. Also, given that most rules related to contract law are supplementary, the parties to the contract can use clarifying contractual terms in cases of deficiency, insufficiency, conflict, or silence of the laws to make decisions regarding the aforementioned matters in their contractual relationship and thus reduce the unpredictability of judicial judgments in their legal relationship.
Keywords
- unpredictability of judicial judgments
- legal coherence
- legal certainty
- legal stability
- legal security
- formalism
Main Subjects
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