Foundations of the Differentiation of Criminal Proceedings in the Iranian Legal System

Abstract

Criminal law, over many centuries, was established on principles that were firm and coherent, defined, explained, and systematized on the basis of idealized norms of what ought and ought not to be. Consequently, it presented a harsh, inflexible, and uncompromising image of criminal law, both in its substantive and procedural dimensions. However, in recent decades these very principles and foundations have been profoundly influenced by political, scientific, cultural, social, and even economic developments, to the extent that traditional penal principlism has faced major challenges. With the passage of time, and with the increasing technical specialization of criminal law and its gradual globalization, the global criminal justice system came to recognize that the era of uniform responses to crime and criminality had come to an end, and that criminal policies must undergo change. The Iranian criminal justice system has likewise not remained immune to these transformations and, over time, has witnessed and accepted differentiated forms of criminal proceedings. Nevertheless, since any change in this direction within the criminal justice system requires the existence of necessary and sufficient foundations to justify differentiation, the present study—using an analytical–descriptive method—examines the theoretical, criminological, jurisprudential (fiqh-based), and practical foundations of differentiated proceedings within Iran’s criminal justice system. These foundations are regarded as constituting the basis of differentiated adjudication and, in the future, will also serve to justify differentiation in the handling of various crimes across different domains.